Sybaris and other homes, to which is added How they lived in Hampton

LIBRARY

or

SANTA

CRUZ

THE WORKS OF

EDWARD EVERETT HALE

Bfcftion

VOLUME IX

SYBARIS
HOW THEY LIVED IN HAMPTON

Sybaris
And Other Homes

TO WHICH IS ADDED

How they Lived in Hampton

BY

EDWARD EVERETT HALE

BOSTON

LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY
1900

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1869,
BY FIELDS, OSGOOD, & Co.,

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court for the District of
Massachusetts.

Copyright, i888y
BY J. STILLMAN SMITH & Co.

Copyright, 1900,

BY LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY

All rights reserved

UNIVERSITY PRESS . JOHN WILSON
AND SON • CAMBRIDGE, U.S.A.

PS

PREFACE

TO THE EDITION OF 1900.

THE sympathetic reader will at once see that
the essays in this volume belong together,
however different in form; and that they follow
out the same line of opinion and of hope. With
some hesitation, I have resisted the temptation,
natural enough, to recast them so far as to substi
tute the statistics of the year 1900, or in any way
the point of view of to-day, for those which belong
to the time when the papers were printed. " What
is written, is written."

The date of the Sybaris papers, which are the
earliest, is 1869; the date of the Hampton book,
which is the latest, is 1886; so that nearly twenty
years parts the two.

It is with some pride that in the year 1900 I call
the reader's attention to the fulfilment in thirty-
one years of some prophecies of 1869. Cable
cars have proved workable in that time; but I
have letters of that date from civil engineers who
wished to prove to me that they were impossible.
Mr. Ingham found the automobiles in successful
use in Sybaris, and doubtless to-day he would find
them in Naples.

vi Sybaris and Other Homes

My distinguished friend, the late Josiah Quincy,
used to flatter me by telling me that he owed to
the suggestions made in the Naguadavick paper
the interest with which he embarked in the crea
tion of Wollaston, now one of the most interesting
and beautiful villages built up near Boston. To
his energy and forethought the people of Boston
owe the improvements in legislation which have
made possible the building up of such towns by
the combined effort of the persons who are to
inhabit them.

The paper on Boston must be read as belong
ing to the year 1869. With the energy of a Board
of Health which is not afraid to do its duty,
the terrible grievances there described have been
largely abated. The sad mortality of children
spoken of in this paper was checked by the im
pulse given in the creation of the Sea Shore Home,
and maintained by the admirable efficiency of the
Floating Hospital. But the population of Boston
is still terribly overcrowded, and we must still do
everything possible to relieve the congestion.

When the earlier papers of this series were
written, the Mayor of Boston was chosen for one
year only, and he had next to no power. Under
a new charter he has a term of two years, and
his power and responsibility are considerably
enlarged.

Writing in the year 1900, thirty years after the
first of these papers were written, I think I ought

Preface

vn

to say that the friends of decent government in
cities should not be wholly dissatisfied with the
improvements made in a generation.

To any American reader, Mr. Shaw's studies
will easily show how great has been the improve
ment achieved in the cities of Europe. To speak
of our affairs here, the machinery of Boston, of
New York, and of other cities, is certainly better
than it was then. And there is hardly one of the
western cities of America which, in some detail at
least, has not an object lesson worthy of careful
study. Sensible men no longer faint nor sneer
at the suggestion that a city may own a tramway
or a gas pipe. The health of children in the large
cities is much more sure than it was then. Con
tagious diseases, the disgrace of what is called
civilization, are checked to a perceptible degree.
And the next generation has reason to hope that
democracy may find out how to manage cities as
well as they were managed two thousand years
ago.

Between the date of the paper relative to the
housing of the people of Boston and the study of
co-operation which is made at length under the
title " How They Lived in Hampton," a period
of twenty years passed. But the studies for the
Hampton book were made as early as 1873. At
page 208 of this volume the reader will find an
account, not only of that book and its origin, but
of some progress which has been made in carry-

viii Sybaris and Other Homes

ing out in practice the principles and theories on
which it is founded.

I dedicated the first edition of Sybaris to the
Suffolk Union for Christian Work. This Union
formed a regular meeting of gentlemen and ladies
interested in plans where each lives for all and
all for each. Its name and organization ceased
with the organization of the Associated Chanties,
the Municipal Club, the Twentieth Century Club,
and some other similar societies; but I like to
recall here its efficiency in endeavors for " The
Possible Boston."

EDWARD E. HALE.

ROXBURY, June 19, 1900.

CONTENTS

SYBARIS

PAGE

PREFACE TO THE EDITION OF 1900 v

DEDICATION 3

PREFACE TO THE EDITION OF 1869 5

MY VISIT TO SYBARIS 15

How THEY LIVED AT NAGUADAVICK 102

How THEY LIVE IN VINELAND 136

How THEY LIVE IN BOSTON, AND HOW THEY DIE

THERE .... . . 170

HOMES FOR BOSTON LABORERS 193

APPENDIX 205

HOW THEY LIVED IN HAMPTON

PREFACE TO NEW EDITION . . 211

PREFACE TO THE EDITION OF 1888 221

CHAPTER

I. How THEY LIVED IN HAMPTON .... 223

II. THE PLAN 244

III. THE RESULTS 250

IV. THE STORE 273

x Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

V. THE ENTERPRISER 300

VI. CHILDREN'S WORK 316

VII. THE SCHOOL 331

VIII. HOURS OF WORK 346

IX. THE CHURCH 358

X. THE PUBLIC LIBRARY 375

XI. ENTERTAINMENT 382

XII. TEMPERANCE 399

XIII. THE SAVINGS-BANK 407

XIV. WORK AND LABOR 425

XV. COMMUNISM . . ... 442

XVI. CONCLUSION 451

SYBARIS
AND OTHER HOMES

DEDICATION

I DEDICATE THIS BOOK

TO THE

SUFFOLK UNION FOR CHRISTIAN WORK

At the meeting which formed that Society the provision for better
homes in cities was publicly declared to be the first work of Christian
reform. At every meeting since some person has enforced the same
necessity.

EDWARD E. HALE

SOUTH CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH, BOSTON,
September 18, 1869.

PREFACE

TO THE EDITION OF 1869

f I VHE reader will see that the papers in this
•*• book have a single object, whether cast in
the form of fiction, or whether statistical narra
tives of fact. If I should classify them as the
papers were classified in an earlier volume of this
little series, the account of Naguadavick is the
account of what ought to be ; the account of
Vineland is the account of what is; and the
account of Boston is the account of what ought
not to be. In the narrative of Sybaris the reade
will find something of " if," something of "yes,"
something of " perhaps ; " some possibility, much
fact, and some exaggeration.

I have, perhaps, a right to explain the earnest
ness with which I try to enforce the necessity of
better homes for laboring men by stating a sin
gle circumstance in my own history. For nearly
twenty-five years I have been constantly engaged
in the Christian ministry. About half that time
was spent in Worcester, Massachusetts; about
half of it in Boston. When I went to Worcester
it was a town of about eight thousand people;
when I left it, it had three times that number.

6 Sybaris and Other Homes

Boston is a crowded town of a quarter-million
inhabitants. It is impossible for me not to notice,
in every hour of my life, the contrast between the
homes of the working people in these two places.
I might almost say that there is no other differ
ence of importance between the social oppor
tunities of the two places. They are not far apart ;
both are active places of business, employing in
about equal proportions people of enterprise and
energy in the varied work of manufacture, com
merce, and transportation. But in one of these
places almost every man can own his house, and
half the men do. In the other hardly any man
can own his house, and half the people are
crowded into quarters where no man should be
compelled to live.

To watch over and improve the charities of any
town is the special duty of a Christian minister
in it, — to feed its hungry and clothe its naked,
to open the eyes of its blind and the ears of its
deaf, to make its lame walk, to cleanse its lepers,
and to preach good tidings to its poor. Will the
reader imagine to himself the position of the man
engaged in that duty, when he finds his sick in
such tenements as they must live in, in our present
system, — his blind, for instance, born so, perhaps,
in rooms with no window, and all his poor in such
homes that the only truly good tidings are tidings
which send them away from him? Where a con
siderable part of the people live in such homes,
our best-devised charities, either for moral culture

Preface 7

or physical relief, work at terrible odds. Your
City Missions, your Ministry at Large, your Indus
trial Aid Society, or your Overseers of the Poor
are all working against the steady dead weight
which, as we all know, presses down and holds
down the man who is in an unhealthy or unhappy
home.

The contrast in my own life between life in a
small manufacturing and commercial town and life
in a large one makes me feel the bitterness of
these odds the more. I am sure that the suffering
thus involved is unnecessary, as I am sure the
labor which tries to relieve its symptoms must be
in large measure thrown away. With an intense
personal interest, therefore, have I attempted
to show in this book how these evils may be
remedied.

I do not know but Colonel Ingham's sug
gestions as to his imagined Sybaris may be
thought too roseate and ideal for our Western
longitudes. They have been already published in
the " Atlantic Monthly," and, in his absence in
Siberia, I have been once and again favored
with criticisms upon them. It is but fair to him
to say that, so far as the paper refers to ancient
Sybaris or Thurii, it is a very careful study of the
best authorities regarding that interesting state, —
a study which I wish might be pushed further by
somebody. And I incorporate the paper in this
volume because it seems to me that we have a
great deal to learn from the ancient cities and

8 Sybaris and Other Homes

from their methods of government, were it only
the great lesson of the value of training in
administration.

There is a very odd habit of speech about
republican government, which, like most careless
habits of speech, hurts our practice. When the
theory of a republic is discussed, everybody says
that it worked admirably in cities of compact ter
ritory, but that it failed when it had to be ex
tended over wider regions. This is really a
commonplace in the old-fashioned sturdy books
on political institutions. But when you come to
talk politics with practical people to-day, the
chances are nine in ten that they say, " Ah, repub
lican institutions are admirable for the country at
large ; they work perfectly for a scattered popu
lation ; but when you come to compact cities you
want something very different. Must have one
head there, one head there," &c., &c., &c. Now,
certainly this is very odd, that just as we have all
learned to repeat one of these lessons from old
Greek and Roman history, illustrated in the his
tory of Greek and Roman colonies, we should all
have to turn round and say exactly the other
thing. Is it not probable that there is some mis
understanding?

I believe that a careful study of the history of
the Greek and Roman cities shows that their suc
cess is largely due to their attention to the science
of administration. The men who discharged spe
cific functions were trained to those functions and

Preface 9

knew how to discharge them. In the Roman cities
no man could be a candidate for the higher grades
of service unless he had served so many years in
the lower. Any old Roman, asked to vote in our
city elections, would take it for granted that no
man could be an alderman who had not been a
common councilman for a certain number of
years, nor a mayor unless he had been an alder
man for a certain number. In Athens they were
even more careful, and all officers were as dis
tinctly trained to their duties as with us civil engi
neers are or architects. What followed was, that
when the right man got into place, there was a
reasonable probability that he stayed in.

In our elective city governments, on the other
hand, with a great deal of good feeling and a great
deal of public spirit, we find uncertainty, hurry
sometimes, and delay in others, frequent changes
in system, shyness about responsibility, and, in
consequence, a great deal of discomfort and grum
bling. I once asked a very able and pure man,
Alexander A. Rice, then Mayor of Boston, why the
city did not undertake a duty which seemed im
portant. " How should I know?" said he, with a
sigh. "I was chosen to this place eight months
ago, with no experience in city affairs. If I am
chosen again in December, I may have heart to
start on some such proposal as you name. But
really, the first year of a man's service as mayor
must be given to learning where he stands." This
is perfectly true.

io Sybaris and Other Homes

Now, at the end of the first year who determines
whether such a man shall or shall not go on? Al
most always, five hundred men, united, can settle
that thing one way or another. If he have wounded
the feelings of the policemen, — if he have made a
change in the management of the fire companies,
— if in any way he have crossed the track of any
compact organization, he is put out and some other
new man is put in, for his apprenticeship. I do
not believe that this system of neophyte mayors is
necessary. And I believe that whenever the public
is roused to study it, it will be changed.

It does not make so much difference in Boston,
however, because the Mayor has no great power,
after all. He is not much more than a chairman
of selectmen. The same difficulty, as it seems to
me, comes in, in the choice of the aldermen, who
have, collectively, some power. I read a great
deal of insulting language and bitter sneering
about aldermen. I suppose there are bad alder
men, as I know there are bad ministers, bad paint
ers, and bad bootblacks. But, in my experience,
the aldermen with whom I have had to confer on
the affairs of the city have been hardworking, up
right, intelligent, public-spirited men, doing a great
deal of work, for which they got no pay and no
thanks ; and doing it, under our lumbering system,
very well. But they were all doing it by instinct,
and not after training. They had happened upon
the situation which made them a directory of
twelve, governing, in nice details of administra-

Preface 1 1

tion, a city of a quarter-million people. They
had never been trained in advance to do that
duty. And by the time they had learned it, in
presence of the enemy, they were heartily sick
of it, and were glad to resign.

It seems to me, that as long as we govern cities
in that way, we shall have bad horse-cars, bad tene
ment-houses, bad streets, bad theatres, bad liquor-
shops, and a great many other bad things, which,
in a city where administration was a science, and
no man chosen to office until he had been trained
to it, Colonel Ingham did not find in Sybaris.

I observe that the newspapers are a good deal
exercised when a committee of the city govern
ment, or when any city officers, go to study the
systems of some other cities. For my part, I wish
they went a great deal oftener than they do, and
studied such systems a great deal more. I believe
the city of Boston could make no wiser expendi
ture than it would make in sending to Europe,
once in five years, an intelligent officer from each
great department to study French, English, Ger
man, Italian, and Russian administration of streets ;
of hackney-coaches, omnibuses, and railroad sta
tions; of prisons; of the detective and general
police ; of health ; of markets ; and of education.
There is hardly a large city in the civilized world
which has not some hints of value which it could
give to every other city.

Colonel Ingham has received many protests
against the arbitrary and unprincipled action of

1 2 Sybaris and Other Homes

the government of Sybaris in compelling marriage
among its people. He had already made his own
protest, as he could, in his journal. Nor would he
wish to be understood as desiring to enforce any
where statutes so tyrannical. But, as I understand
him, he is convinced, by what he has seen in Sybaris
and in the rest of the world, that every artificial ob
stacle to marriage is so much multiplication of all
other evil in the world, and whether that obstacle
come in the form of fashion, of custom, of senti
ment, of gossip, of political economy, or of law, it
is to be deprecated and set aside.

I may add that I do not know why such views
have not a larger place than they have in the cur
rent discussions of female suffrage. The married
woman and the married man being one, she now
has suffrage. How would it answer to withdraw
suffrage from the unmarried men? This would
put them on an equality with the unmarried
women; and there would be a possibility, if they
are troubled by the loss, of their regaining the
privilege.

But I will not, in a preface, discuss the details of
any of the experiments in city administration here
suggested. My chief wish is accomplished, if I
can call attention to the delicacy and difficulty of
these questions, and to the necessity of studying
them with scientific and conscientious precision.
When our best men study the details of local ad
ministration with the care with which Themistocles,
Aristides, and Pericles studied them in Athens, —

Preface 1 3

with which Metellus, the Catos, Pompey the Great,
and Julius Caesar were willing to study them in
Rome, — we shall find, as I believe, no difficulty
in the republican government of cities.

The shorter essays in this book are devoted to
the single subject of the homes of laborers at work
in large cities, and, as I trust, require no further
explanation.

As the last sheets of this book leave my hands,
the watchful kindness of a friend enables me to add
the last word regarding Sybaris.

Under the title " De Paris a Sybaris " (Paris : A.
Lemerre, 1868) M. Leon Palustre de Montifaut
publishes his studies of art and literature in Rome
and Southern Italy. And here is his record of
what he saw of Sybaris. He speaks first of Cas-
sano, the last Italian town which looks down upon
the valley of ancient Sybaris.

" Cassano, with its beautiful gardens, its tranquil
aspect, and its gray mountains, reminds one of the
ancient Sichem. It has its freshness and its poetry,
if it has not the same reminiscences.

" Still, I hastened my departure, for I was eager
to cross before night those broad and marshy ex
panses over which the eye travelled without an
obstacle, — a vast semicircle cut into the thickness
of the Apennine, or fertile intervals left by the sea.

" And what was I going to see? Not so much
as a ruin, — an uncertain region over which lay
loose the voluptuous name of Sybaris. And I had

14 Sybaris and Other Homes

made a long journey. I had undergone incredible
fatigue to give myself this empty satisfaction. How
the inhabitants of this easy city would have laughed
at me ! They could not understand, says Athenaeus,
why one should quit his country. For themselves
they gloried in growing old where they first saw the
light. Yet this people practised the broadest hos
pitality, and, contrary to the policy of most of the
Greek states, they readily admitted the colonists
of other nations to the rank of citizens. May not
this liberal spirit and the astonishing fertility of the
soil explain the prosperity of this prosperous town,
which is so strangely kept in obscurity by all anti
quity? Varro tells us that wheat produced a hun
dredfold on the whole territory of Sybaris. At
the present time the uplands produce the richest
harvests."

And this, I am sorry to say, is the only contri
bution to the history or topography of Sybaris
made since the date of Mr. Ingham's voyage. Mon
sieur Montifaut, alas ! like all the others, hurried
across the upland six miles back from the sea. It
is as if a traveller from Providence, coming up to
Readville, should cross to Watertown and Waltham,
and then, going through the Notch of the White
Mountains to Montreal, should publish his observa
tions on Boston.

And these notes, alas ! as late as 1867, are dated
like Colonel Ingham's, on the 1st of April!

MY VISIT TO SYBARIS

FROM REV. FREDERIC INGHAM'S PAPERS

IT is a great while since I first took an interest in
Sybaris. Sybarites have a bad name. But
before I had heard of them anywhere else, I had
painfully looked out the words in the three or four
precious anecdotes about Sybaris in the old Greek
Reader ; and I had made up my boy's mind about
the Sybarites. When I came to know the name
they had got elsewhere, I could not but say that
the world had been very unjust to them !

Oh, dear ! I can see it now, — the old Latin
School room where we used to sit and hammer
over that Greek, after the small boys had gone.
They went at eleven ; we — because we were twelve
or more — stayed till twelve. From eleven to
twelve we sat, with only those small boys who had
been " kept " for their sins, and Mr. Dillaway.
The room was long and narrow ; how long and how
narrow you may see, if you will go and examine
M. Duchesne's model of " Boston as it was," and
pay twenty-five cents to the Richmond schools.
For all this is of the past ; and in the same spot in
space where once a month the Examiner Club now

1 6 Sybaris and Other Homes

meets at Parker's and discusses the difference be
tween religion and superstition, the folly of copy
right, and the origin of things, the boys who did
not then belong to the Examiner Club, say Fox
and Clarke and Furness and Waldo Emerson,
thumbed their Grseca Minora or their Greek Read
ers in " Boston as it was," and learned the truth
about Sybaris ! A long, narrow room, I say, whose
walls, when I knew them first, were of that tawny
orange wash which is appropriated to kitchens.
But, by a master stroke of Mr. Dillaway's, these
walls were made lilac or purple one summer vaca
tion. We sat, to recite, on long settees, pea-green
in color, which would teeter slightly on the well-
worn floor. There, for an hour daily, while brighter
boys than I recited, I sat an hour musing, looking
at the immense Jacobs's Greek Reader, and waiting
my turn to come. If you did not look off your
book much, no harm came to you. So, in the
hour, you got fifty-three minutes and a few odd
seconds of day-dream, for six minutes and two-
thirds of reciting, unless, which was unusual, some
fellow above you broke down, and a question,
passed along of a sudden, recalled you to modern
life. I have been sitting on that old green settee,
and at the same time riding on horseback in Vir
ginia, through an open wooded country, with one
of Lord Fairfax's grandsons and two pretty cousins
of his, and a fallow deer has just appeared in the
distance, when, by the failure of Hutchinson or
Wheeler, just above me, poor Mr. Dillaway has had

My Visit to Sybaris 17

to ask me, " Ingham, what verbs omit the redu
plication?" Talk of war! Where is versatility,
otherwise called presence of mind, so needed as
in recitation at a public school?

Well, there, I say, I made acquaintance with
Sybaris. Nay, strictly speaking, my first visits to
Sybaris were made there and then. What the
Greek Reader tells of Sybaris is in three or four
anecdotes, woven into that strange, incoherent
patchwork of " Geography." In that place are
patched together a statement of Strabo and one of
Athenaeus about two things in Sybaris which may
have belonged some eight hundred years apart.
But what of that to a school-boy ! Will your
descendants, dear reader, in the year 3579 A. D.,
be much troubled if, in the English Reader of
their day, Queen Victoria shall be made to drink
Spartan black broth with William the Conqueror
out of a conch-shell in New Zealand?

With regard to Sybaris, then, the old Jacobs's
Greek Reader tells the following stories : " The
Sybarites were distinguished for luxury. They
did not permit the trades which made a loud noise,
such as those of brass-workers, carpenters, and the
like, to be carried on in the heart of the city, so
that their sleep might be wholly undisturbed by
noise. . . . And a Sybarite who had gone to
Lacedaemon, and had been invited to the public
meal, after he had sat on their wooden benches
and partaken of their fare, said that he had been
astonished at the fearlessness of the Lacedaemo-

1 8 Sybaris and Other Homes

nians when he knew it only by report ; but now
that he had seen them, he thought that they did
not excel other men, for he thought that any brave
man had much rather die than be obliged to live
such a life as they did." Then there is another
story, among the " miscellaneous anecdotes," of a
Sybarite who was asked if he had slept well. He
said, No, that he believed he had a crumpled rose-
leaf under him in the night. And there is yet
another, of one of them who said that it made his
back ache to see another man digging.

I have asked Polly, as I write, to look in Mark
Lemon's Jest-Book for these stories. They are
not in the index there. But I dare say they are
in Cotton Mather and Jeremy Taylor. Anyway,
they are bits of very cheap Greek. Now, it is on
such stories that the reputation of the Sybarites in
modern times appears to depend.

Now look at them. This Sybarite at Sparta
said, that in war death was often easier than the
hardships of life. Well, is not that true? Have
not thousands of brave men said it? When the
English and French got themselves established
on the wrong side of Sebastopol, what did that
engineer officer of the French say to somebody
who came to inspect his works? He was talking
of St. Arnaud, their first commander. " Cunning
dog," said he, " he went and died." Death was
easier than life. But nobody ever said he was a
coward or effeminate because he said this. W7hy,
if our purpose would permit an excursus of two

My Visit to Sybaris 19

hundred pages here, on this theme, we would
defer Sybaris to the 1st of April, 1870, while we
illustrated the Sybarite's manly epigram, which
these stupid Spartans could only gape at, but
could not understand.

Then take the rose-leaf story. Suppose by
good luck you were breakfasting with General
Grant, or Pelissier, or the Duke of Wellington.
Suppose you said, " I hope you slept well," and
the great soldier said, "No, I did not; I think a
rose-leaf must have stood up edgewise under me."
Would you go off and say in your book of travels
that the Americans, or the French, or the English
are all effeminate pleasure-seekers, because one of
them made this nice little joke ? Would you like
to have the name " American " go down to all
time, defined as Webster1 defines Sybarite?

A-MER'I-CAN, n. [Fr. Amtricain, Lat. Atnericanus, from
Lat. America, a continent noted for the effeminacy and
voluptuousness of its inhabitants.] A person devoted to
luxury and pleasure.

Should you think that was quite fair for your
great-grandson's grandson's descendant in the
twenty-seventh remove to read, who is going to
be instructed about Queen Victoria and William
the Conqueror?

Worst of all, and most frequently quoted, is the

1 I am writing in Westerly's snuggery, and in Providence
they believe in Webster's dictionary. I dare say it is worse in
Worcester's. A good many things are.

2O Sybaris and Other Homes

story of the coppersmiths. The Sybarites, it is
said, ordered that the coppersmiths and brass-
founders should all reside in one part of the city,
and bang their respective metals where the neigh
bors had voluntarily chosen to listening to bang
ing. What if they did? Does not every manu
facturing city practically do the same thing?
What did Nicholas Tillinghast use to say to the
boys and girls at Bridgewater? "The tendency of
cities is to resolve themselves into order."

Is not Wall Street at this hour a street of
bankers? Is not the Boston Pearl Street a street
of leather men? Is not the bridge at Florence
given over to jewellers? Was not my valise,
there, bought in Rome at the street of trunk-
makers? Do not all booksellers like to huddle
together as long as they can? And when Ticknor
and Fields move a few inches from Washington
Street to Tremont Street, do not Russell and Bates
and Childs and Jenks, and De Vries and Ibarra
follow them as soon as the shops can be got ready?

" But it is the motive," pipes up the old gray
ghost of propriety, who started this abuse of the
Sybarites in some stupid Spartan black-broth shop
(English that for caft), two thousand two hundred
and twenty-two years ago, — which ghost I am
now belaboring, — " it is the motive. The Syba
rites moved the brass-founders, because they
wanted to sleep after the brass-founders got up in
the morning." What if they did, you old rat in the
arras? Is there any law, human or divine, which

My Visit to Sybaris 21

says that at one and the same hour all men shall
rise from bed in this world? My excellent milk
man, Mr. Whit, rises from bed daily at two o'clock.
If he does not, my family, including Matthew,
Mark, Luke, John, and Acts, will not have their
fresh milk at 7.37, at which time we breakfast or
pretend to. But because he rises at two, must we
all rise at two, and sit wretchedly whining on our
respective campstools, waiting for Mr. Whit to
arrive with the grateful beverage? Many is the
time, when I have been watching with a sick child
at five in a summer morning, when the little fellow
had just dropped into a grateful morning doze,
that I have listened and waited, dreading the
arrival of the Providence morning express. For I
knew that a mile and a half out of Boston, the
engine would begin to blow its shrill whistle, for
the purpose, I believe, of calling the Boston
station-men to their duty. Three or four minutes
of that skre-e-e-e must there be, as that train swept
by our end of the town. And hoping and wishing
never did any good; the train would come, and
the child would wake. Is not that a magnificent
power for one engine-man to have over the morn
ing rest of fifty thousand sleeping people, because
you, old Spartan croaker, who can't sleep easy
underground, it seems, want to have everybody
waked up at the same hour in the morning? When
I hear that whistle, and the fifty other whistles of
the factories that have since followed its wayward
and unlicensed example, I have wished more than

22 Sybaris and Other Homes

once that we had in Boston a little more of the
firm government of Sybaris.

For if, as it would appear from these instances,
Sybaris were a city which grew to wealth and
strength by the recognition of the personal rights
of each individual in the state, — if Sybaris were a
republic, where the individual was respected, had
his rights, and was not left to the average chances
of the majority of men, — then Sybaris had found
out something which no modern city has found out,
and which it is a pity we have all forgotten.

I do not say that I went through all this specu
lation at the Latin School. I got no further there
than to see that the Sybarites had got a very
bad name, and that the causes did not appear in
the Greek Reader. I supposed there were causes
somewhere which it was not proper to put into
the Greek Reader. Perhaps there were. But if
there were, I have never found them since, — not
being indeed very well acquainted with the lines
of reading in which those who wanted to find
them should look for them.

What I did find of Sybaris, when I could read
Greek rather more easily, and could get access to
some decent atlases, was briefly this.

Well forward in the hollow of the arched foot of
the boot of Italy, two little rivers run into the Gulf
of Tarentum. One was once named Crathis ; one
was named Sybaris. Here stood the ancient city
of Sybaris, founded about the time of Romulus or

My Visit to Sybaris 23

Numa Pompilius, by a colony from Greece. For
two hundred years and more — almost as long,
dear Atlantic, as your beloved Boston has sub
sisted — Sybaris flourished, and was the Rome of
that region, ruling it from sea to sea.

It was the capital of four states, — a sort of New
England, if you will observe, — and could send
three hundred thousand armed men into the field,
more, I will observe in passing, than New England
has as yet ever had occasion to send at one
moment. The walls of the city were six miles in
circumference, while the suburbs covered the
banks of the Crathis for a space of seven miles.
At last the neighboring state of Crotona, under
the lead of Milon the Athlete (he of the calf and
ox and split log), the Heenan or John Morrissey
of his day, vanquished the more refined Sybarites,
turned the waters of the Crathis upon their pros
perous city, and destroyed it. But the Sybarites
had had that thing happen too often to be dis
couraged. Five times, say the historians, had
Sybaris been destroyed, and five times they built
it up. This time (444 B.C.) the Athenians sent ten
vessels, with men to help them, under Lampon
and Xenocritus. And they, with those who stood
by the wreck, gave their new city the name of
Thurii. Among the new colonists were Herodotus
and Lysias the orator, who was then a boy. The
spirit that had given Sybaris its comfort and its
immense population appeared in the legislation of
the new state. It received its laws from CHARON-

24 Sybaris and Other Homes

DAS, one of the noblest legislators of the world.
Study these laws and you will see that in the
young Sybaris the individual had his rights, which
the public preserved for him, though he were
wholly in a minority. There is an evident deter
mination that a man shall live while he lives, and
that, too, in no sensual interpretation of the words.
Of the laws made by Charondas for the new
Sybaris a few are preserved.

1. A calumniator was marched round the city
in disgrace, crowned with tamarisk. " In conse
quence," says the Scholiast, "they all left the
city." Oh for such a result, from whatever legisla
tion, in our modern Pedlingtons, great or little !

2. All persons were forbidden to associate with
the bad.

3. "He made another law, better than these,
and neglected by the older legislators. For he
enacted that all the sons of the citizens should be
instructed in letters, the city paying the salaries of
the teachers. For he held that the poor, not being
able to pay their teachers from their own property,
would be deprived of the most valuable discipline."
There is FREE EDUCATION for you, two thousand
and seventy-six years before the date of your first
Massachusetts free school ; and the theory of free
education completely stated.

4. Deserters or cowards in battle had to sit in
women's dresses in the Forum three days.

5. With regard to the amendment of laws, any
man or woman who moved one did it with a noose

My Visit to Sybaris 25

round his neck, and was hanged if the people re
fused it. Only three laws were ever amended,
therefore, all of which are recorded in the history.
Observe that the women might move amendments,
— and think of the simplicity of legislation !

6. The law provided for cash payments, and the
government gave no protection for those who sold
on credit.

7. Their communication with other nations was
perfectly free.

I might give more instances. I should like to
tell some of the curious stories which illustrate this
simple legislation. Poor Charondas himself fell
a victim to it. One of the laws provided that no
man should wear a sword into the public assembly.
No Cromwells there ! Unfortunately, by accident,
Charondas wore his own there one day. Brave
fellow ! when the fault was pointed out, he killed
himself with it.

Now, do you wonder that a city, where there
were no calumniators, no long credit, no bills at
the grocers, no fighting at town-meetings, no
amendments to the laws, no intentional and open
association with profligates, and where everybody
was educated by the state to letters, proved a com
fortable place to live in ? It is of the old Sybaris
that the coppersmith and the rose-leaf stories are
told; and it was the new Sybaris that made the
laws. But do you not see that there is one spirit
in the whole? Here was a nation which believed
that the highest work of a nation was to train its

26 Sybaris and Other Homes

people. It did not believe in fight, like Milon or
Heenan or the old Spartans ; it did not believe in
legislation, like Massachusetts and New York; it
did not believe in commerce, like Carthage and
England. It believed in men and women. It
respected men and women. It educated men and
women. It gave their rights to men and women.
And so the Spartans called them effeminate.
And the Greek Reader made fun of them. But
perhaps the people who lived there were indifferent
to the opinions of the Spartans and of the Greek
Reader. Herodotus lived there till he died ; wrote
his history there, among other things. Lysias,
the orator, took part in the administration. It is
not from them, you may be sure, that you get
the anecdotes which ridicule the old city of
Sybaris !

You and I would probably be satisfied with such
company as that of Herodotus and Charondas and
Lysias. So we hunt the history down to see if
there may be lodgings to let there this summer,
but only to find that it all pales out in the
ignorance of our modern days. The name gets
changed into Lupiae; but there it turns out that
Pausanias made a " strange mistake," and should
have written Copia, — which was perhaps Cossa,
or sometimes Cosa. Pyrrhus appears, and Hadrian
rebuilds something, and the " Oltramontani," who
ever they may have been, ravage it, and finally the
Saracens fire and sack it; and so, in the latest
Italian itinerary you can find, there is no post-road

My Visit to Sybaris 27

goes near it, only a strada rotabile (wheel-track)
upon the hills ; and, alas ! even the rotabile gives
way at last, and all the map will own to is a strada
pedonale, or footpath. But the map is of the less
consequence when you find that the man who
edited it had no later dates than the beginning of
the last century, when the family of Serra had
transferred the title to Sybaris to a Genoese family
without a name, who received from it forty thou
sand ducats yearly, and would have received more,
if their agents had been more faithful. There the
place fades out of history, and you find in your
Swinburne " that the locality has never been
thoroughly examined ; " in your Smith's Dic
tionary, that "the whole subject is very obscure,
and a careful examination still much needed ; " in
the Cyclopedia, that the site of Sybaris is lost.
Craven saw the rivers Crathis and Sybaris. He
seems not to have seen the wall. of Sybaris, which
he supposed to be under water. He does say of
Cassano, the nearest town he came to, that "no
other spot can boast of such advantages." In
short, no man living who has written any book
about it dares say that anybody has looked upon
the certain site of Sybaris for more than a hundred
years.1 If a man wanted to write a mythical story,
where could he find a better scene?

1 The reader who cares to follow the detail is referred to Dio-
dorus Siculus, xii. 9 et seq. ; Strabo, vi. ; yElian, v. H. 9, c.
24; Athenseus, xii. 518-520; Plutarch in Pelopidas ; Herodotus,
v. and vi. Compare Laurent's Geographical Notes, and Wheeler

28 Sybaris and Other Homes

Now is not this a very remarkable thing? Here
was a city which, under its two names of Sybaris
or of Thurii, was for centuries the regnant city
of all that part of the world. It could call into the
field three hundred thousand men, — an army
enough larger than Athens ever furnished, or
Sparta. It was a far more populous and powerful
state than ever Athens was, or Sparta, or the whole
of Hellas. It invented and carried into effect free
popular education, — a gift to the administration
of free government larger than ever Rome ren
dered. It received and honored Charondas, the
great practical legislator, from whose laws no man
shall say how much has trickled down into the
Code Napoleon or the Revised Statutes of New
York, through the humble studies of the Roman
jurists. It maintained in peace, prosperity, happi
ness, and, as its maligners say, in comfort, an
immense population. If they had not been as

and Gainsford; Pliny, iii. 15; vii. 22; xvi. 33; viii. 64; xxxi.
9, 10 ; Aristotle, Polit. iv. 12; v. 3; Heyne's Opuscula, ii. 74;
Bentley's Phalaris, 367; Solinus, 2, § 10, "luxuries grossly ex
aggerated;" Scymnus, 337-360; Aristophanes, Vesp. 1427, 1436;
Lycophron, Alex. 1079 » Pausanias at Lupias ; Polybius, Gen.
Hist. ii. 3, on the confederation of Sybaris, Kroton, and Kau-
lonia, — "a perplexing statement," says Grote, " showing that he
must have conceived the history of Sybaris in a very different
form from that in which it is commonly represented ; " third volume
of De Non, who disagrees with Magnan as to the site of Sybaris,
and says the seashore is uninhabitable ! Tuccagni Orlandini, vol.
xi., Supplement, p. 294; besides the dictionaries and books of
travels, including Murray. I have availed myself, without other
reference, of most of these authorities.

My Visit to Sybaris 29

comfortable as they were, — if a tenth part of them
had received alms every year, and a tenth part
were flogged in the public schools every year, and
one in forty had been sent to prison every year, as
in the happy city which publishes these humble
studies, — then Sybaris, perhaps, would never have
got its bad name for luxury. Such a city lived,
flourished, ruled, for hundreds of years. Of such
a city all that you know now with certainty is, that
its coin is " the most beautifully finished in the
cabinets of ancient coinage ; " and that no traveller
pretends to be sure that he has been to the site of
it for more than a hundred years. That speaks
well for your nineteenth century.

Now the reader who has come thus far will un
derstand that I, having come thus far, in twenty
odd years since those days of teetering on the
pea-green settee, had always kept Sybaris in the
background of my head, as a problem to be solved,
and an inquiry to be followed to its completion.
There could hardly have been a man in the world
better satisfied than I to be the hero of the adven
ture which I am now about to describe.

If the reader remembers anything about Gari
baldi's triumphal entry into Porto Cavallo in Sicily
in the spring of 1859, he will remember that, be
tween the months of March and April in that year,
the great chieftain made, in that wretched little
fishing haven, a long pause, which was not at
the time understood by the journals or by their

30 Sybaris and Other Homes

military critics, and which, indeed, to this hour
has never been publicly explained. I suppose I
know as much about it as any man now living.
But I am not writing Garibaldi's memoirs, nor in
deed, my own, excepting so far as they relate to
Sybaris; and it is strictly nobody's business to
inquire as to that detention, unless it interest the
ex-king of Naples, who may write to me, if he
chooses, addressing Frederic Ingham, Esq., Water-
ville, N. H. Nor is it anybody's business how long
I had then been on Garibaldi's staff. From the
number of his staff officers who have since visited
me in America, very much in want of a pair of
pantaloons, or a ticket to New York, or something
with which they might buy a glass of whiskey, I
should think that his staff alone must have made
up a much more considerable army than Naples,
or even Sybaris, ever brought into the field. But
where these men were when I was with him, I do
not know. I only know that there was but a hand
ful of us then, hardworked fellows, good-natured,
and not above our duty. Of its military details we
knew wretchedly little. But as we had no artillery,
ignorance was less dangerous in the chief of
artillery ; as we had no maps to draw, poor drafts
manship did not much embarrass the engineer in
chief. For me, I was nothing but an aid, and I
was glad to do anything that fell to me as well as I
knew how. And, as usual in human life, I found
that a cool head, a steady resolve, a concentrated
purpose, and an unselfish readiness to obey carried

My Visit to Sybaris 31

me a great way. I listened instead of talking, and
thus got a reputation for knowing a great deal.
When the time to act came, I acted without waiting
for the wave to recede ; and thus I sprang into
many a boat dry-shod, while people who believed
in what is popularly called prudence missed their
chance, and either lost the boat or fell into the
water.

This is by the way. It was under these circum
stances that I received my orders, wholly secret
and unexpected, to take a boat at once, pass the
straits, and cross the Bay of Tarentum, to com
municate at Gallipoli with — no matter whom.
Perhaps I was going to the " Castle of Otranto."
A hundred years hence anybody who chooses will
know. Meanwhile, if there should be a reaction in
Otranto, I do not choose to shorten anybody's
neck for him.

Well, it was five in the afternoon, — near sun
down at that season. I went to dear old Frank
Chancy, — the jolliest of jolly Englishmen, who
was acting quartermaster-general, — and told him
I must have transportation. I can see him and
hear him now, — as he sat on his barrel-head, and
smoked his vile Tunisian tobacco in his beloved
short meerschaum, which was left to him ever
since he was at Bonn, a student with Prince Albert
as he pretended. He did not swear, — I don't
think he ever did. But he looked perplexed
enough to swear. And very droll was the twinkle
of his eye.

32 Sybaris and Other Homes

The truth was, that every sort of a thing that
would sail, and every wretch of a fisherman that
could sail her, had been, as he knew, and as I
knew, sent off that very morning to rendezvous at
Carrara, for the contingent which we were hoping
had slipped through Cavour's pretended neutrality.
And here was an order for him to furnish me
" transportation " in exactly the opposite direction.

" Do you know of anything, yourself, Fred ? " said
he.

" Not a coffin," said I.

"Did the chief suggest anything? "

" Not a nutshell," said I.

" Could not you go by telegraph ? " said Frank,
pointing up to the dumb old semaphore in whose
tower he had established himself. " Or has not
the chief got a wishing carpet? Or can't you ride
to Gallipoli? Here are some excellent white-
tailed mules, good enough for Pindar, whom Col-
vocoressis has just brought in from the monastery.
' Transportation for one ! ' Is there anything to be
brought back? Nitre, powder, lead, junk, hard
tack, mules, horses, pigs, polenta or olla podrida,
or other of the stores of war?"

No ; there was nothing to bring back except my
self. Lucky enough if I came back to tell my own
story. And so we walked up on the tower deck to
take a look.

Blessed Saint Lazarus, chief of Naples and of
beggars ! a little felucca was just rounding the
Horse Head and coming into the bay, wing-wing.

My Visit to Sybaris 33

The fishermen in her had no thought that they
were ever going to get into the Atlantic. Maybe
they had never heard of the Ocean or of the
Monthly. Can that be possible? Frank nodded,
and I. He filled up with more Tunisian, beckoned
to an orderly, and we walked down to the landing-
jetty to meet them.

" Viva Italia ! " shouted Frank, as they drew
near enough to hear.

" Viva Garibaldi / " cried the skipper, as he let
his sheet fly and rounded to the well-worn stones.
A good voyage had they made of it, he and his two
brown, ragged boys. Large fish and small, pink
fish, blue, yellow, orange, striped fish and mottled,
wriggled together, and flapped their tails in the
well of the little boat. There were even too many
to lie there and wriggle. The bottom of the boat
was well covered with them, and if she had not
shipped waves enough to keep them cool, the boy
Battista had bailed a plenty on them. Father and
son hurried on shore, and Battista on board began
to fling the scaly fellows out to them.

A very small craft it was to double all those
capes in, run the straits, and stretch across the bay.
If it had been mine " to make reply," I should
undoubtedly have made this, that I would see the
quartermaster hanged, and his superiors, before I
risked myself in any such rattletrap. But as, unfor
tunately, it was mine to go where I was sent, I
merely set the orderly to throwing out fish with
the boys, and began to talk with the father.

3

34 Sybaris and Other Homes

Queer enough, just at that moment, there came
over me the feeling that, as a graduate of the Uni
versity, it was my duty to put up those red, white,
and blue scaly fellows, who were flopping about
there so briskly, and send them in alcohol to
Agassiz. But there are so many duties of that
kind which one neglects in a hardworked world !
As a graduate, it is my duty to send annually to
the College Librarian a list of all the graduates
who have died in the town I live in, with their
fathers' and mothers' names, and the motives that
led them to College, with anecdotes of their career,
and the date of their death. There are two thou
sand three hundred and forty-five of them, I be
lieve, and I have never sent one-half anecdote
about one ! Such failure in duty made me grimly
smile as I omitted to stop and put up these fish in
alcohol, and as I plied the unconscious skipper with
inquiries about his boat. " Had she ever been
outside? " " Oh, signer, she had been outside this
very day. You cannot catch tonno till you have
passed both capes, — least of all, such fine fish as
that is," — and he kicked the poor wretch. Can
it be true, as Channing says, that those dying flaps
of theirs are exquisite luxury to them, because for
the first time they have their fill of oxygen ? " Had
he ever been beyond Peloro? " " Oh, yes, signer;
my wife, Catarina, was herself from Messina," —
and on great saints' days they had gone there often.
Poor fellow, his great saint's day sealed his fate.
I nodded to Frank, — Frank nodded to me, — and

My Visit to Sybaris 35

Frank blandly informed him that, by order of
General Garibaldi, he would take the gentleman at
once on board, pass the strait with him, " and then
go where he tells you."

The Southern Italian has the reputation, derived
from Tom Moore, of being a coward. When I
used to speak at school, —

" Ay, down to the dust with them, — slaves as they are ! " —

stamping my foot at " dust," I certainly thought
they were a very mean crew. But I dare say that
Neapolitan school-boys have some similar school
piece about the risings of Tom Moore's country
men, which certainly have not been much more
successful than the poor little Neapolitan revolu
tion which he was pleased to satirize. Somehow
or other, Victor Emanuel is, at this hour, King of
Naples. Coward or not, this fine fellow of a fisher
man did not flinch. It is my private opinion that he
was not nearly as much afraid of the enterprise as I
was. I made this observation at the moment with
some satisfaction, sent Frank's man up to my lodg
ings with a note ordering my own traps sent down,
and in an hour we were stretching out, under the
twilight, across the little bay.

No ! I spare you the voyage. Sybaris is what
we are after, all this time, if we can only get there.
Very easy it would be for me to give you cheap
scholarship from the ALneid, about Palinurus and
Scylla and Charybdis. Neither Scylla nor Cha-
rybdis bothered me, as we passed wing-wing be-

36 Sybaris and Other Homes

tween them before a smart north wind. I had a
little Hunter's Virgil with me, and read the whole
voyage, and confused Battista utterly by trying
to make him remember something about Palinuro,
of whom he had never heard. It was much as I
afterwards asked my negro waiter at Fort Monroe
about General Washington at Yorktown. " Never
heard of him, sir, — was he in the Regular Army?"
So Battista thought Palinuro must have fished in
the Italian fleet, with which the Sicilian boatmen
were not well acquainted. Messina made no ob
jections to us. Perhaps, if the sloop of war which
lay there had known who was lying in the boat
under her guns, I might not be writing these words
to-day. Battista went ashore, got lemons, maca
roni, hard bread, polenta, for themselves, the Gior-
nale di Messina for me, and more Tunisian ; and,
not to lose that splendid breeze, we cracked on all
day, past Reggio, hugged the shore bravely,
though it was rough, ran close under those cliffs
which are the very end of the Apennines, — will it
shock the modest reader if I say the very toe-nails
of the Italian foot? — hauled more and more east
ward, made Spartivento blue in the distance, made
it purple, made it brown, made it green, still run
ning admirably, — ten knots an hour we must have
got between four and five that afternoon, — and,
by the time the lighthouse at Spartivento was
well ablaze, we were abreast of it, and might be
gin to haul more northward, so that, though we
had a long course before us, we should at last be

My Visit to Sybaris 37

sailing almost directly toward our voyage's end,
Gallipoli.

At that moment — as in any sea often happens,
if you come out from the more land-locked chan
nel into the larger body of water — the wind ap
peared to change. Really, I suppose, we came
into the steady southwest wind which had probably
been drawing all day up toward the Adriatic. In
two hours more we made the lighthouse of Stilo, and
I was then tired enough to crawl down into the fear
fully smelling little cuddy, and, wrapping Battista's
heavy storm-jacket round my feet, I caught some
sort of sleep.

But not for very long. I struck my watch at
three in the morning. And the air was so un
worthy of that name — it was such a thick paste,
seeming to me more like a mixture of tar and oil
and fresh fish and decayed fish and bilge-water than
air itself — that I voted three to be morning, and
crawled up into the clear starlight, — how wonder
ful it was, and the fresh wet breeze that washed my
face so cheerily ! — and I bade Battista take his
turn below, while I would lie there and mind the
helm. If — if he had done what I proposed, I
suppose I should not be writing these lines ; but
his father, good fellow, said : " No, signer, not
yet. We leave the shore now for the broad bay,
you see ; and if the wind haul southward, we may
need to go on the other tack. We will all stay
here till we see what the deep-sea wind may be."
So we lay there, humming, singing, and telling

38 Sybaris and Other Homes

stories, still this rampant southwest wind behind, as
if all the powers of the Mediterranean meant to
favor my mission to Gallipoli. The boat was now
running straight before it. We stretched out
bravely into the gulf; but, before the wind, it was
astonishing how easily the lugger ran. He said
to me at last, however, that on that course we were
running to leeward of our object ; but that it was
the best point for his boat, and if the wind held,
he would keep on so an hour longer, and trust to
the land breeze in the morning to run down the
opposite shore of the bay.

" If" again. The wind did not keep on. Either
the pole-star, and the dipper, and all the rest of
them, had rebelled and were drifting westward, —
and so it seemed, — or this steady southwest gale
was giving out ; or, as I said before, we had come
into the sweep of a current even stronger, pouring
from the Levantine shores of the Mediterranean
full up the Gulf of Tarentum. Not ten minutes
after the skipper spoke, it was clear enough to
both of us that the boat must go about, whether
we wanted to or not, and we waked the other boy,
to send him forward, before we accepted the neces
sity. Half asleep, he got up, courteously declined
my effort to help him by me as he crossed the
boat, stepped round on the gunwale behind me as
I sat, and then, either in a lurch or in some mis
step, caught his foot in the tiller as his father held
it firm, and pitched down directly behind Battista
himself, and, as I thought, into the sea. I sprang

My Visit to Sybaris 39

to leeward to throw something after him, and
found him in the sea indeed, but hanging by both
hands to the gunwale, safe enough, and in a
minute, with Battista's help and mine, on board
again. I remember how pleased I was that his
father did not swear at him, but only laughed
prettily, and bade him be quick, and step forward ;
and then turning to the helm, which he had left
free for the moment, he did not swear indeed,
but he did cry, " Santa Madre ! " when he found
there was no tiller there. The boy's foot had fairly
wrenched it, not only from his father's hand, but
from the rudder-head, — and it was gone !

We held the old fellow firmly by his feet and
legs, as he lay over the stern of the boat, head
down, examining the condition of the rudder-head.
The report was not favorable. I renewed the in
vestigation myself in the same uncomfortable atti
tude. The phosphorescence of the sea was but an
unsteady light, but light enough there was to reveal
what daylight made hardly more certain, — that
the wrench which had been given to the rotten old
fixtures, shaky enough at best, had split the head
of the rudder, so that the pintle hung but loosely
in its bed, and that there was nothing available for
us to rig a jury tiller on. This discovery, as it be
came more and more clear to each of us four in
succession, abated successively the volleys of
advice which we were offering, and sent us back to
our more quiet " Santa Madres " or to meditations
on "what was next to best."

40 Sybaris and Other Homes

Meanwhile the boat was flying, under the sail she
had before, straight before the wind, up the Gulf
of Tarentum.

If you cannot have what you like, it is best, in a
finite world, to like what you have. And while
the old man brought up from the cuddy his
wretched and worthless stock of staves, rope-ends,
and bits of iron, and contemplated them ruefully,
as if asking them which would like to assume the
shape of a rudder-head and tiller, if his fairy god
mother would appear on the top of the mast for a
moment, I was plying the boys with questions, —
what would happen to us if we held on at this tear
ing rate, and rushed up the bay to the head there
of. The boys knew no more than they knew of
Palinuro. Far enough, indeed, were we from their
parish. The old man at last laid down the bit of
brass which he had saved from some old waif, and
listened to me as I pointed out to them on my
map the course we were making, and, without an
swering me a word, fell on his knees and broke
into most voluble prayer, — only interrupted by
sobs of undisguised agony. The boys were almost
as much surprised as I was. And as he prayed
and sobbed, the boat rushed on !

Santa Madre, San Giovanni, and Sant1 Antonio,
— we needed all their help, if it were only to keep
him quiet; and when at last he rose from his
knees, and came to himself enough to tend the
sheets a little, I asked, as modestly as I could,
what put this keen edge on his grief or his devo-

My Visit to Sybaris 41

tions. Then came such stones of hobgoblins,
witches, devils, giants, elves, and fairies, at this
head of the bay ! — no man ever returned who
landed there ; his father and his father's father had
charged him, and his brothers and his cousins,
never to be lured to make a voyage there, and
never to run for those coves, though schools of
golden fish should lead the way. It was not till
this moment that, trying to make him look upon
the map, I read myself there the words, at the
mouth of the Crathis River, " Sybari Ruine."

Surely enough, this howling Euroclydon — for
Euroclydon it now was — was bearing me and
mine directly to Sybaris !

And here was this devout old fisherman con
firming the words of Smith's Dictionary, when it
said that nobody had been there and returned, for
generation upon generation.

At a dozen knots an hour, as things were, I was
going to Sybaris ! Nor was I many hours from
it. For at that moment we cannot have been more
than five-and-thirty miles from the beach, where, in
less than five hours, Euroclydon flung us on shore.

The memory of the old green settees, and of
Hutchinson and Wheeler and the other Latin-
School boys, sustained me beneath the calamity
which impended. Nor do I think at heart the
boys felt so bad as their father about the djinns and
the devils, the powers of the earth and the powers
of the air. Is there, perhaps, in the youthful mind,
rather a passion for " seeing the folly " of life a

42 Sybaris and Other Homes

little in that direction? None the less did we join
him in rigging out the longest sweep we had aft,
lashing it tight under the little rail which we had
been leaning on, and trying gentle experiments,
how far this extemporized rudder might bring the
boat round to the wind. Nonsense the whole !
By that time Euroclydon was on us, so that I
would never have tried to put her about if we had
had the best gear I ever handled, and our experi
ments only succeeded far enough to show that we
were as utterly powerless as men could be. Mean
while day was just beginning to break. I soothed
the old man with such devout expressions as here
tic might venture. I tried to turn him from the
coming evil to the present necessity. I counselled
with him whether it might not be safer to take in
sail and drift along. But from this he dissented.
Time enough to take in sail when we knew what
shore we were coming to. He had no kedge or
grapple or cord, indeed, that would pretend to
hold this boat against this gale. We would beach
her, if it pleased the Virgin ; and if we could not,
— shaking his head, — why, that would please the
Virgin, too.

And so Euroclydon hurried us on to Sybaris.

The sun rose, oh, how magnificently ! Is there
anywhere to see sunrise like the Mediterranean?
And if one may not be on the top of Katahdin, is
there any place for sunrise like the very level of
the sea? Already the Calabrian mountains of our
western horizon were gray against the sky. One

My Visit to Sybaris 43

or another of us was forward all the time, trying
to make out by what slopes the hills descended to
the sea. Was it cliff of basalt, or was it reedy
swamp, that was to receive us? I insisted at last
on his reducing sail. For I felt sure that he was
driving on under a sort of fatality which made
him dare the worst. I was wholly right, for the
boat now rose easier on the water, and was much
more dry.

Perhaps the wind flagged a little as the sun rose.
At all events, he took courage, which I had never
lost. I made his boy find us some oranges. I
made them laugh by eating their cold polenta with
them. I even made him confess, when I called
him aft and sent Battista forward, that the shore
we were nearing looked low. For we were near
enough now to see stone-pines and chestnut-trees.
Did anybody see the towers of Sybaris ?

Not a tower ! But, on the other hand, not a
gnome, witch, Norna's Head, or other intimation
of the underworld. The shore looked like many
other Italian shores. It looked not very unlike
what we Yankees call salt-marsh. At all events,
we should not break our heads against a wall !
Nor will I draw out the story of our anxieties,
varying as the waves did on which we rose and fell
so easily. As she forged on, it was clear at last that
to some wanderers, at least, Sybaris had some hos
pitality. A long, low spit made out into the sea,
with never a house on it, but brown with storm-
worn shrubs, above the line of which were the

44 Sybaris and Other Homes

stone-pines and chestnuts which had first given
character to the shore. Hard for us, if we had
been flung on the outside of this spit. But we
were not. Else I had not been writing here to
day. We passed it by fifty fathom clear. Of
course under its lee was our harbor. Battista let
go the halyards in a moment, and the wet sails
came rattling down. The old man, the boy, Bat
tista, and I seized the best sweeps he had left.
Two of us at each, working on the same side, we
brought her head round as fast as she would bear
it in that fearful sea. Inch by inch we wrought
along to the smoother water, and breathed free at
last as we came under the partial protection of
the friendly shore.

Battista and his brother then hauled up the sail
enough to give such headway to the boat as we
thought our sweeps would control. And we crept
along the shore for an hour, seeing nothing but
reeds, and now and then a distant buffalo, when at
last a very hard knock on a rock the boy ahead
had not seen under water started the planks so
that we knew that was dangerous play ; and, with
out more solicitation, the old man beached the
boat in a little cove where the reeds gave place
for a trickling stream. I told them they might
land or not, as they pleased. I would go ashore
and get assistance or information. The old man
clearly thought I was going to ask my assistance
from the father of lies himself. But he was re
signed to my will, — said he would wait for my

My Visit to Sybaris 45

return. I stripped and waded ashore with my
clothes upon my head, dressed as quickly as I
could, and pushed up from the beach to the low
upland.

Clearly enough I was in a civilized country.
Not that there was a gallows, as the old joke
says ; but there were tracks in the shingle of the
beach showing where wheels had been, and these
led me to a cart-track between high growths of
that Mediterranean reed which grows all along in
those low flats. There is one of the reeds on the
hooks above my gun in the hall as you came in.
I followed up the track, but without seeing barn,
house, horse, or man, for a quarter of a mile,
perhaps, when behold, —

Not the footprint of a man ! as to Robinson
Crusoe ; —

Not a gallows and man hanging ! as in the
sailor story above named ; —

But a railroad track ! Evidently a horse-rail
road.

" A horse-railroad in Italy ! " said I, aloud. " A
horse-railroad in Sybaris ! It must have changed
since the days of the coppersmiths ! " And I flung
myself on a heap of reeds which lay there, and
waited.

In two minutes I heard the fast step of horses,
as I supposed ; in a minute more four mules
rounded the corner, and a " horse-car " came
dashing along the road. I stepped forward and
waved my hand, but the driver bowed respectfully,

46 Sybaris and Other Homes

pointed back, and then to a board on top of his
car, and I read, as he dashed by me, the word

displayed full above him ; as one may read Complet
on a Paris omnibus.

Now nx^/oe? is the Greek for full. " In Sybaris
they do not let the horse-railroads grind the faces
of the passengers," said I. " Not so wholly changed
since the coppersmiths," And, within the minute,
more quadrupedantal noises, more mules, and an
other car, which stopped at my signal. I entered,
and found a dozen or more passengers, sitting back
to back on a seat which ran up the middle of the
car, as you might ride in an Irish jaunting-car.
In this way it was impossible for the conductor to
smuggle in a standing passenger, impossible for a
passenger to catch cold from a cracked window,
and possible for a passenger to see the scenery
from the window. "Can it be possible," said
I, " that the traditions of Sybaris really linger
here?"

I sat quite in the front of the car, so that I could
see the fate of my first friend IlX?}/>e9, — the full
car. In a very few minutes it switched off from our
track, leaving us still to pick up our complement,
and then I saw that it dropped its mules, and was
attached, on a side track, to an endless chain,
which took it along at a much greater rapidity,
so that it was soon out of sight. I addressed my
next neighbor on the subject in Greek which

My Visit to Sybaris 47

would have made my fortune in those old days
of the pea-green settees. But he did not seem
to make much of that, but in sufficiently good
Italian told me that as soon as we were full, we
should be attached in the same way to the chain,
which was driven by stationary engines five or six
stadia apart, and so indeed it proved. We picked
up one or two market-women, a young artist or
two, and a little boy. When the child got in, there
was a nod and smile on people's faces ; my next
neighbor said to me, IlXrJpe?, as if with an air of
relief; and, sure enough, in a minute more, we
were flying along at a 2.20 pace, with neither
mule nor engine in sight, stopping about once a
mile to drop passengers, if there was need, and
evidently approaching Sybaris.

All along now were houses, each with its pretty
garden of perhaps an acre, no fences, because no
cattle at large. I wonder if the Vineland people
know they caught that idea from Sybaris ! All
the houses were of one story, — stretching out as
you remember Pliny's villa did, if Ware and Van
Brunt ever showed you the plans, — or as Erastus
Bigelow builds factories at Clinton. I learned
afterwards that stair-builders and slaveholders are
forbidden to live in Sybaris by the same article in
the fundamental law. This accounts, with other
things, for the vigorous health of their women. I
supposed that this was a mere suburban habit, and,
though the houses came nearer and nearer, yet as
no two houses touched in a block, I did not know

48 Sybaris and Other Homes

we had come into the city till all the passengers
left the car, and the conductor courteously told me
we were at our journey's end.

When this happens to you in Boston, and you
leave your car, you find yourself huddled on a
steep, sloping sidewalk, under the rain or snow,
with a hundred or more other passengers, all eager,
all wondering, all unprovided for. But I found in
Sybaris a large glass-roofed station, from which
the other lines of neighborhood cars radiated, in
which women and even little children were passing
from route to route, under the guidance of civil
and intelligent persons, who, strange enough, made
it their business to conduct these people to and
fro, and did not consider it their duty to insult the
traveller. For a moment my mind reverted to the
contrast at home ; but not long. As I stood ad
miring and amused at once, a bright, brisk little
fellow stepped up to me, and asked what my pur
pose was, and which way I would go. He spoke
in Greek first, but, seeing I did not catch his mean
ing, relapsed into very passable Italian, quite as
good as mine.

I told him that I was shipwrecked, and had come
into town for assistance. He expressed sympathy,
but wasted not a moment, led me to his chief at an
office on one side, who gave me a card with the
address of an officer whose duty it was to see to
strangers, and said that he would in turn introduce
me to the chief of the boat-builders ; and then said,
as if in apology for his promptness, —

My Visit to Sybaris 49

" Welcome the coming, speed the parting guest."

He called to me a conductor of the red line, said
HeVo?, which we translate guest, but which I found
in this case means " dead-head," or " free," bowed,
and I saw him no more.

" Strange country have I come to, indeed," said
I, as I thought of the passports of Civita Vecchia,
of the indifference of Scollay's Buildings, and
of the surliness of Springfield. "And this is
Sybaris ! "

We sent down a tug to the cove which I indi
cated on their topographical map, and to the terror
of the old fisherman and his sons, to whom I had
sent a note, which they could not read, our boat
was towed up to the city quay, and was put under
repairs. That last thump on the hidden rock was
her worst injury, and it was a week before I could
get away. It was in this time that I got the in
formation I am now to give, partly from my own
observations, partly from what George the Proxe-
nus or his brother Philip told me, — more from
what I got from a very pleasing person, the wife
of another brother, at whose house I used to visit
freely, and whose boys, fine fellows, were very fond
of talking about America with me. They spoke
English very funnily, and like little school-books.
The ship-carpenter, a man named Alexander, was
a very intelligent person ; and, indeed, the whole
social arrangement of the place was so simple that

4

50 Sybaris and Other Homes

it seemed to me that I got on very fast and knew
a great deal of them in a very short time.

At this point I will, for greater convenience,
quote directly from my journal. It has the fault
which all journals have, that their memoranda are
apt to be fullest when one has the most time to
write, and that they are therefore most barren just
at those points of crisis when the writer really has
most to tell. This remark will be found near the
beginning of " John Adams's Journal," of which it
is signally true. I will, however, copy what there
is in mine. When I find that it fails, I will do my
best to supply the deficiency.

JOURNAL.

The TT/ao'fei/o?, Proxenus, as this officer is called
(officer whose business is to care for strangers,
quite after the old Athenian system), was very
civil, though a short-metre kind of person, used
evidently to affairs in the time of affairs, and to
nothing else. He offered Greek at first for talk, as
the man had done at the station; but finding I
preferred Italian, fell into that readily. I am too
tired to-night, not to say sleepy, to try to write out
much of what he told me, or I told him. He was
very expeditious, when he heard about the boat, in
sending to her relief. He led me to a good map of
the city and harbor which hung on the office wall,
and in five minutes had sent a despatch which he
said would fit out a tug which would bring the old

My Visit to Sybaris 51

man and the boys up to the city. I offered to go
with them. But he said no, — that I should be of
no use there, — or rather of none which a note
from me would not serve as well ; and that, as I
must have had a fatiguing night, I should be much
better off at my inn. I observed he used the tele
graph constantly, even sending his own despatches
by his own instrument, at his office desk, — writ
ing as readily so as I do these words. In answer
to a question of mine, he said there were delivery
offices almost everywhere, and that they hardly
ever had occasion to use a special messenger.
But when he wanted to send my note to the tug,
and afterwards to send me here, he beckoned to
his son, a tall, pleasant-looking boy, who brought
me, to show me the way.1

The inn covers a good deal of ground for the
number of rooms, but there is not a staircase in it.
It is not larger than a generous private house.
The whole is of one story, as is every other house
I have so far seen in Sybaris. The mistress is a

1 After I knew the Proxenus better, I told him that this ready
and constant use of the telegraph was one of the first of their con
veniences I noticed. He said the telegraph was an old affair with
them, and he wondered other nations had been so slow in copy
ing it ; that they used it as long ago as what he called their day of
horrors, when Sybaris was crushed by the Crotoniates more than
five centuries before Christ. I was amazed at this, but in their
public library afterward I found in Pliny that that defeat was
known at Olympia in Greece on the day it happened, and the same
statement is in Cicero De Naturd Deorum. See Pliny, vii. 22 (i),
and compare Plutarch in Paulus j&milius, where he names four
such incidents,

52 Sybaris and Other Homes

jolly-looking person, who for all her jollity seems
careful and thoughtful, and desirous to be of ser
vice; and, without worrying me, she has really
made me very comfortable. She knocked just
now herself, and in quite a studied speech said
that I was the first American she had ever had
here ; that she was wholly unacquainted with our
customs, but that she would be much obliged to
me if I would indicate to her any improvements
which the inns of my own country might suggest
to me. The poor soul had been at the pains to
look up " United States " in some book of travels,
and had even written to the Proxenus to ask how
she should cook pork and beans for me, and what
she should give me instead of salt codfish. He
had written her a funny note, which she showed
me, in which he said that I should be satisfied with
pheasants and quails for a day, and that the next
day he would tell her.

Experience of my own country indeed ! There
was not a fly in the room where the table d'hote is
served, nor is there in this apartment. This con
sists of a pretty, airy sitting-room with a veranda
opening from it, and in the next room the bed and
its appurtenances. I found on the table pen, ink,
and paper, which I never found ready in my own
room at the Brevoort ; I found in the bedroom a
foot-tub, a shower-bath, more towels than I could
count, and hot and cold water ready to run for me.
I have not smelled a smell since I came into the
house, excepting the savory breakfast and dinner

My Visit to Sybaris 53

which she gave me, and these lovely Italian violets
which stand on the writing-table ; and, of course,
my cigar on the veranda. But I shall write no
more. Now we will see if there are any smooth
rose-leaves in the beds of Sybaris.

That is the end of that day's entry.

The Proxenus came round to see me that first
evening, and we sat, smoking, on the piazza
together. I remember I spoke with pleasure of
the horse-railroad management, and asked as to
the methods they took to secure such personal
comfort.

He said that my question cut pretty low down,
for that the answer really involved the study of
their whole system. " I have thought of it a good
deal," said he, "when I have been in St. Peters
burg, and in England and America; and as far as
I can find out, our peculiarity in everything is,
that we respect — I have sometimes thought we
almost worshipped — the rights, even the notions
or whims, of the individual citizen. With us the
first object of the state, as an organization, is to
care for the individual citizen, be he man, woman,
or child. We consider the state to be made for
the better and higher training of men, much as
your divines say that the Church is. Instead of
our lumping our citizens, therefore, and treating
Jenny Lind and Tom Heenan to the same dose of
public schooling, — instead of saying that what is
sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander, — we

54 Sybaris and Other Homes

try to see that each individual is protected in the
enjoyment, not of what the majority likes, but of
what he chooses, so long as his choice injures no
other man."

I thought, in one whiff, of Stuart Mill, and of
the coppersmiths.

" Our horse-railroad system grew out of this
theory," continued he. " As long ago as Herodo
tus, people lived here in houses one story high,
with these gardens between. But some genera
tions ago, a young fellow named Apollidorus, who
had been to Edinburgh, pulled down his father's
house and built a block of what you call houses on
the site of it. They were five stories high, had
basements, and so on, with windows fore and aft,
and, of course, none on the sides. The old fogies
looked aghast. But he found plenty of fools to
hire them. But the tenants had not been in a
week when the Kategoros, district attorney, had
him up ' for taking away from a citizen what he
could not restore/ This, you must know, is one
of the severest charges in our criminal code.

" Of course, it was easy enough to show that
the tenants went willingly; he showed dumb
waiters, and I know not what infernal contrivances
of convenience within. But he could not show
that the tenants had north windows and south
windows, because they did not. The government,
on their side, showed that men were made to
breathe fresh air, and that he could not ventilate
his houses as if they were open on all sides ; they

My Visit to Sybaris 55

showed that women were not made to climb up
and down ladders, and to live on stages at the tops
of them ; and he tried in vain to persuade the jury
that this climbing was good for little children. He
had lured these citizens into places dangerous for
health, growth, strength, and comfort And so he
was compelled to erect a statue typical of strength,
and a small hospital for infants, as his penalty.
That spirited Hercules, which stands in front of
the market, was a part of his fine.

" Of course, after a decision like this, concentra
tion of inhabitants was out of the question. Every
pulpit in Sybaris blazed with sermons on the text,
' Every man dwelt safely under his vine and under
his fig-tree.' Everybody saw that a house without
its own garden was an abomination, and easy com
munication with the suburbs was a necessity.

" It was, indeed, easy enough to show, as the
city engineer did, that the power wasted in lifting
people up, and, for that matter, down stairs, in a
five-story house, in one day, would carry all those
people I do not know how many miles on a level
railroad track in less time. What you call horse-
railroads, therefore, became a necessity."

I said they made a great row with us.

" Yes," said he, " I saw they did. With us the
government owns and repairs the track, as you do
the track of any common road. We never have
any difficulty.

" You see," he added after a pause, " with us, if
a conductor sprains the ankle of a citizen, it is a

56 Sybaris and Other Homes

matter the state looks after. With you, the citi
zen must himself be the prosecutor, and virtually
never is. Did you notice a pretty winged Mer
cury outside the station-house you came to ? "

I had noticed it.

" That was put up, I don't know how long ago,
in. the infancy of these things. They took a car
off one night, without public notice beforehand.
One old man was coming in on it, to his daughter's
wedding. He missed his connection out at Little
Krastis, and lost half an hour. Down came the
Kategoros. The company had taken from a citi
zen what they could not restore ; namely, half an
hour."

George lighted another cigar, and laughed very
heartily. " That 's a great case in our reports,"
he said. "The company ventured to go to trial
on it. They hoped they might overturn the old
decisions, which were so old that nobody knows
when they were made, — as old as the dancing
horses," said he, laughing. " They said time was
not a thing, — it was a relation of ideas ; that it
did not exist in heaven ; that they could not be
made to suffer because they did not deliver back
what no man ever saw, or touched, or tasted.
What was half an hour? But the jury was piti
less. A lot of business men, you know, — they
knew the value of time. What did they care for
the metaphysics? And the company was bidden
to put up an appropriate statue worth ten talents
in front of their station-house, as a reminder to all

My Visit to Sybaris 57

their people that a citizen's time was worth some
thing."

I observed a queer thing two or three times in
this visit of the Proxenus. Just at this point he
rose rather suddenly and bade me good-evening.
I begged him to stay, but had to repeat my invita
tion twice. His hand was on the handle of the door
before he turned back. Then he sat down, and
we went on talking; but before long he did the
same thing again, and then again.

At last I was provoked, and said : " What is the
custom of your country? Do you have to take a
walk every eleven minutes and a quarter?"

George laughed again, and indeed blushed. " Do
you know what a bore is? " said he.

" Alas ! I do," said I.

"Well," said he, " the universal custom here is,
that an uninvited guest, who calls on another man
on his own business, rises at the end of eleven
minutes, and offers to go. And the courts have
ruled, very firmly, that there must be a bona fide
effort. We get into such a habit of it that, with
you, I really did it unawares. The custom is as old
as Cleisthenes and his wedding. But some of the
decisions are not more than two or three centuries
old, anoj they are very funny.

" On the whole," he added, " I think it works
well. Of course, between friends it is absurd, but
it is a great protection against a class of people
who think their own concerns are the only things
of value. You see you have only to say, when a

58 Sybaris and Other Homes

man comes in, that you thank him for coming, that
you wish he would stay, or to take his hat or his
stick, — you have only to make him an invited
guest, — and then the rule does not hold."

" Ah ! " said I ; " then I invite you to spend
every evening with me while I am here."

" Take care," said he ; " the Government Almanac
is printed and distributed gratuitously from the fines
on bores. Their funds are getting very low up at
the department, and they will be very sharp on
your friends. So you need not be profuse in your
invitations."

This conversation was a clew to a good many
things which I saw while I was in the city. I
never was in a place where there were so many
tasteful pretty little conveniences for everybody.
At the quadrants, where the streets cross, there
was always a pretty little sheltered seat for four or
five people, — shaded, stuffed, dry, and always the
morning and evening papers, and an advertisement
of the times of boats and trains, for any one who
might be waiting for a car or for a friend. Some
times these were votive offerings, where public spirit
had spoken in gratitude. More often they had
been ordered at the cost of some one who had
taken from a citizen what he could not repay.
The private citizen might often hesitate about
prosecuting a bore, or a nuisance, or a conceited
company officer. But the Kategoroi made no
bones about it. They called the citizen as a wit-

My Visit to Sybaris 59

ness, and gave the criminal a reminder which
posterity held in awe. Their point, as they always
explained it to me, is, that the citizen's health and
strength are essential to the state. The state can
not afford to have him maimed, any more than it
can afford to have him drunk or ignorant. The
individual, of course, cannot be following up his
separate grievances with people who abridge his
rights. But the public accuser can and does.

With us, public servants, who know they are
public servants, are always obliging and civil. I
would not ask better treatment in my own home
than I am sure of in Capitol, State-House, or City
Hall. It is only when you get to some miserable
sub-bureau, where the servant of the servant of a
creature of the state can bully you, that you come
to grief. For instance, the State of Massachusetts
just now forbids corporations to work children more
than ten hours a day. The corporations obey.
But the overseers in the rooms whom the cor
porations employ, work children eleven hours, or
as many as they choose. They would not stand
that in Sybaris.

Such were my first day's observations. I now
resume the Journal of which I have spoken.

Friday •, 9th Kal. ®apyr]\ia)v. — Everything seems
to be new here. Place, language, and all are
changed, — and so my old book for these mem
oranda gave out last night, and I have had to
rummage up another from my stores. Fortunately

60 Sybaris and Other Homes

the traps came up from the boat even before I was
awake this morning. One does sleep well in such
a bed, — without steam-whistles or cockerels or
brass-founders. It was as quiet as the mid-country.

The calendar is as new as the book (of which
the paper is not half as good as the old was). It
seems an odd mixture of Italian and Greek, and I
do not yet understand it. But I put at the top of
the page what the Proxenus tells me to, were it
only for practice. This is, he says, the ninth of the
Kalends of Thargelion, but he counts it Friday, as
I did. For my part, I thought the Greeks had no
Kalends; but it would seem that the Sybarites
have.

It has been a rainy day, but I have managed with
their convenient arrangements here to do about ten
times as much as I should have done at home. If
I do not get too sleepy, I will go into a little more
detail than I have been apt to do since the cam
paign began. The peculiarity of this place seems
to be that everybody has plenty of time.

I slept late after the excitement of the night
before, and if the lady Myrtis's nice mattresses
are made of rose-leaves, none of the leaves were
crumpled. I rang, as I had been bidden, as soon
as I woke ; and a ravishing cup of coffee appeared
almost on the moment, on the strength of which I
dressed slowly, and went down to the table d'hote.
Breakfast was very nicely served; but I do not
stop to describe it, because some rainy day I will
make a chapter on the cookery of Sybaris, so dif-

My Visit to Sybaris 61

ferent from that of our Sicilian allies ; alas ! so dif
ferent from the taverns of my beloved New England.
While I was at breakfast there came in this clever
little note in this pretty Greek Handschrift from the
Proxenus, whose name, it appears, is George : —

[Translation.]

OFFICE OF THE PROXENUS,
Sybaris, Qth Kal. Thar.

COLONEL INGHAM, &c., &c. : —

DEAR SIR, — The report from Pylades, chief of boat-
builders, is that your boat will require a new stern-post as
well as rudder, and that one whole streak on her larboard
side must be renewed. She was ordered to the govern
ment works last night, and the men undoubtedly went to
work on her this morning.

I shall have the pleasure of calling on you at seven
minutes after noon, when I shall be relieved from office
duty here. If you have no pleasanter engagement, let
me take you in my carriage to see our granite quarries
and to bathe. We can do this before dinner. My wife
will be very happy if you will join our family party at four.
Farewell,

GEORGE, the Proxenus.

What his other name is, I do not yet know.
They seem to sign like English bishops.

I strayed round a little before noon, and made a
little sketch of a seat for passengers waiting for the
street railroad cars. At twelve I rendered myself
on the hotel veranda, and at seven minutes past
the Proxenus drove up in a pretty covered buggy,

62 Sybaris and Other Homes

with a nice little trotting mare. He apologized
for the cover; said if the day had been fine he
could have shown me more of the country, but as
it rained, why, we must e'en bear it as we could.

We drove first to the granite quarries, which are
worked with great precision by a fine-looking set
of men, who have much more of the Lombard, not
to say Yankee, look about them in their prompt
ness of movement than I have seen anywhere else
in Southern Italy. Then the Proxenus asked me
if I were used to swimming as early as this in the
season. When I said there were few seasons and
few waters in which I did not swim, and that I
should greatly enjoy a plunge, he turned his
horse's head, and we drove, by a charming up-and-
down-hill drive, I should think six miles, down the
old course of the Crastis River till we came to a
signal-station, — what one might call Watch Hill,
— where was a beautiful view of the gulf, grand
bluffs, smooth beaches, and a fine surf for bathers.
It almost seemed as if we had been expected. A
quaint old fisherman fastened the horse to a fence,
provided towels, pointed out two little sheds for
undressing, and we had a brisk swim in the surf.
How delicious this Mediterranean water is, swept
off the Syrtes by that tremendous Euroclydon ! I
hardly thought yesterday morning that I should
be speaking of it so good-naturedly.

Home to dinner. The Proxenus said his wife
would excuse my frock-coat. And at his house, at
dinner, and in the garden, and on the veranda, I

My Visit to Sybaris 63

have stayed ever since, till now. The family was
charming, — his wife sweet pretty (reminds you of

S G ), and seven children, — four boys,

three girls, — my friend James, who showed me
the way yesterday, being the second son. He and
I are great friends, and his father says I may take
him from the office any day when I want a guide.
The girls have pretty Greek faces, — the youngest
about as big as little Fan-fan, only her name is
Anna, say nine years old.

As for the dinner, I leave that till I can write the
essay on cookery into which the breakfast is to go.
But I do not wonder that that old fellow took his
cooks with him when he went from here to Athens.

It was not exactly the family party which the
note promised. The Chief Justice was there —
who, if I understand, is the cousin of my hostess,
— and his pretty wife ; a young man named
Joannes Isocrates, whom I accused of being a
great-grandson of the orator; and Philip, the
brother of the Proxenus. It was a round table for
twelve. Some of the children had to sit at a side
table, and they were very merry there.

The talk was very ready and free, — generally
general; but sometimes I got off into a separate
private talk with Kleone — as I shall begin to call
George's wife — and with the Chief Justice's wife.
Her husband calls her Lois. We sat long at table,
spending more than half the time over the fruit
and coffee. There was no wine. The dessert,
however, had been served in another room than

64 Sybaris and Other Homes

that we ate the meats in. We passed from room
to room, as we used to when we dined with How-
qua, at Canton. And in the new room we did not
take the same places as before.

I said, in the course of talk, that either they
were all very much at leisure here, or that I had
taken an unconscionable amount of George's
time. . . .

He laughed, and said he could well believe that,
as I had said that I was brought up in Boston.
" When I was there," said he, " I could see that
your people were all hospitable enough, but that
the people who were good for anything were made
to do all the work of the vauriens, and really had
no time for friendship or hospitality. I remember
an historian of yours, who crossed with me, said
that there should be a motto stretched across
Boston Bay, from one fort to another, with the
words, ' No admittance, except on business.' "

I did not more than half like this chaffing at
Boston, and asked how they managed things.1

" Why, you see," said he, " we hold pretty stiffly
to the old Charondian laws, of which perhaps you
know something ; here 's a copy of the code, if you
would like to look over it," and he took one out
of his pocket. " We are still very chary about
amendments to statutes, so that very little time is
spent in legislation ; we have no bills at shops, and
but little debt, and that is all on honor, so that
there is not much account-keeping or litigation ;

1 I am afraid this was Mr. Motley. — E. E. H.

My Visit to Sybaris 65

you know what happens to gossips, — gossip takes
a good deal of time elsewhere, — and somehow
everybody does his share of work, so that all of us
do have a good deal of what you call ' leisure.'
Whether," he added pensively, " in a world God
put us into that we might love each other, and
learn to love, — whether the time we spend in so
ciety, or the time we spend caged behind our office
desks, is the time which should be called devoted
to the ' business of life/ that remains to be seen."

" How came you to Boston," said I, " and
when?"

" Oh, we all have to travel," said George, " if we
mean to go into the administration. And I liked
administration. I observe that you appoint a for
eign ambassador because he can make a good
stump speech in Kentucky. But, since Charondas's
time, training has been at the bottom of our system.
And no man could offer himself here to serve on
the school committee unless he knew how other
nations managed their schools."

"Not if he had himself made school-books?"
said I.

" No ! " laughed George, " for he might introduce
them. With us no professor may teach from a
text-book he has made himself, unless the highest
council of education order it ; and on the same
principle we should never choose a bookseller on
the school committee. And so, to go back," he
said, " when my father found that administration
was my passion, he sent me on the grand tour. I

5

66 Sybaris and Other Homes

learned a great deal in America, and am very fond
of the Americans. But I never saw one here be
fore."

I did not ask what he learned in America, for I
was more anxious to learn myself how they admin
istered government in Sybaris.

The Chief Justice said that he thought George
hardly answered my question. He said that their
system compelled everybody to do what he could
do best, and to a large extent secured this by in
viting people to do what they could do best. A
messenger in a public office, for instance, is invari
ably a man who has legs and a tongue, but who has
no arms. That is, if such a place is vacant, search is
at once made for some person who shall fill this
place well ; and if he can show that there is no
other place he can fill, on that showing he is almost
sure of the appointment. " We have not a copy
ing clerk in the Court House," said the Chief Justice,
" who has two legs. Most of them, in fact, have no
tongues, which is a convenience." Starting from
this, as George had said, it followed that there were
no vauriensy and of course the amount of work fell
lighter on each. But this is not the whole. Custom
in part, statute in part, and in part this terrible
verdict which they all so dread, — the verdict of
they call it,1 — have so wrought on them

1 The verdict of apiray/j.6s is that alluded to above. It is given
on an indictment brought by the state's attorney in a criminal
court. It means, " He has taken from a citizen what he cannot
restore." The derivation reminds one of our action of assumpsit,
but they carry it further than we do.

My Visit to Sybaris 67

that they destroy very little which they have once
created. " Time will do that for us," said Philip,
laughing. " My rear wall tumbles down fast enough
without my helping the fall."

I said I remembered that Judge Merrick said
that, if the thousand million men now in the world
could be set to work in intelligent organized labor,
they could in a generation duplicate the present
monuments of the race of men. The existing farms,
roads, bridges, ships, piers, cities, villages, and all
the rest, could be produced in one generation. All
the other generations have been spent in men's
cutting each other's throats, and in destroying what
other people have been at work upon.

The Chief Justice said this was undoubtedly
true. They tried as far as they could to prevent
such waste of life, and to a large extent he thought
they succeeded. The solidity of their building is
such that they have dwelling-houses which have
been occupied as such for two thousand years.

I said that in London they had told me their
houses tumbled down in eighty.

" Exactly," said the Chief Justice, " and what a
waste that is! When my father was in London,
they were greatly delighted with a system of sewers
they had just turned into the Thames. When I
was there, they were as much delighted, because
they had discovered a method of leading their con
tents away from the Thames."

" When my father was in Boston," said George,
" they were all very proud to show him their success

68 Sybaris and Other Homes

in digging down their highest hill. When I was
there they were building it up to the old height, to
make a reservoir on top of it." 1

" We have come to the conclusion," said the
Chief Justice, "that it is rather dangerous interfer
ing much with nature. That is to say, when a
large body of men have nestled down in a region,
it was probably about what they wanted. If one of
them tries to mend, he is apt t6 mar. We had a
fellow over on the Crastis there, who was stingy
about using steam-power; so he made a great
high dam on the river, — and, by Jupiter, Colonel
Ingham, five hundred thousand people lost their
fish because that fellow chose to spin cotton a
millionth part of a drachma cheaper than the rest.

" He got dpTrary/Aos with a vengeance," growled
Philip, who is a little touchy.

" He got a/07ra7/409," said the Chief Justice, " and
he had to put in fish-ways. You must take our
friend out to see the fish go up his stairways,
George. But what happened at Paestum was worse
than that. They had some salt marshes there, —
what they call flats. They undertook to fill them
up so as to get land in place of water. They got
more than they bargained for. They disturbed the
natural flow of the currents, and they lost their
harbor. Land is plenty in Paestum now. The
last time I was there the population was two owls
and four lizards, and there was never a rose within
five miles !

1 Since 1879 theY ^ave pulled this down. — E. E. H., 1900.

My Visit to Sybaris 69

I called him back to talk of this universal occu
pation, resulting in universal leisure. He said I
should understand it better after I had been about
a little. I said we had difficulty at both ends, —
the poorest people did not know how to work, and
the richest people were apt not to want to, and
did not know what to do. I said I was at one time
secretary of the " Society for providing Occupation
for the Higher Classes." He said, as to the first
they clung to the old apprenticeship system.
Every child must be taught to do something. If
the parents cannot teach, somebody else does.
The other difficulty he ha,d seen in travelling, but
he did not believe it was necessary. They have
here but few very large fortunes transmitted from
father to son. They have no such transmission by
will, and unless a man has given away his property
before his death the state becomes his executor.
Of course in practice, except in cases of sudden
death, people are their own executors. Then they
give every man and woman who is over sixty-five
a small pension, — enough to save anybody from
absolute want. They insist on it that this is the
most convenient arrangement. They know almost
nothing of drunkenness ; and what follows is, that
everybody does something somewhere.

As the chief explained this to me, I saw his wife
and Philip were laughing about something, and
when the learned talk was done Philip made her
tell me what it was. It was the story of one of their
attempts to save time, which had not succeeded so

70 Sybaris and Other Homes

well. Two or three enterprising fellows, in those
arts which rank as the disagreeable necessities,
went into partnership, offering to their customers
the saving of time gained by getting through the
minor miseries together. You sat in a chair to
have your hair cut, and a dentist at the same
time filled your teeth.1 Then you were permitted
at the same time to have any man up who wanted
to read his poems to you, and you could hear them
as you sat. While the dentist was rolling up the
gold, they had a photograph man ready to take your
likeness. Lois declared she would show me a like
ness of her husband that was so savage she was
sure it was taken there. But of course this was
running the thing into the ground. It was only
an exaggeration, and did not last after the novelty
was gone.

I said they certainly had got the right men in
the right places in administration, as far as I had
seen, bowing to the Proxenus.

He parried the compliment by pretending to
think I meant the railroad people, and said I was
right there, that they had a very good staff in the
transportation department.

I said that we had tried the experiment, in some
cases, of placing idiots in charge of the minor rail
way stations, and to drive the little railway cabs or
flies from such stations. He said he had observed
this in America, but he should not think it would

1 I believe a part of that plan was to have a chiropodist look at
your feet ; but at table they did not speak of that.

My Visit to Sybaris 71

work well. I said the passengers generally knew
what they wanted, — that we had an excellent class
of men as train conductors, and that these idiots
must be put somewhere. Yes, he said, but that
you never could tell what station might be impor
tant ; that I might depend upon it, it was cheaper
in the long run to have a man competent for the
full conceivable duty of the place, even if we had
to pay him something more.

About eight o'clock I bowed myself out. George
walked home with me, and again we had a cigar
on the veranda. They raise their own tobacco, in
some cross valleys they have, running east and
west, and the cigars are splendid, — real Vuelta
d'Abajo, I should have thought them. But, of
course, under such laws, no man can smoke in
the streets or in a crowd.

Saturday, ®apyr]\ia)v, 8th Kal. — A fine day.
But I find one does not rise very early in the
morning.

Spent the morning from nine to twelve with the
Chief Justice in court. Business very prompt, very
interesting, of which more at another time. I have
full notes of all the cases, in the printed briefs
which the Judge gave me. At twelve the court
closed with absolute promptness. All their public
offices of administration work four public hours, as
they say. But an office where one calls for infor
mation — as the Post-Office, the Public Library,
or any of the charities — is open night and day the

72 Sybaris and Other Homes

century round The Public Library has not been
closed, they say, since Herodotus wrote there.
They showed me his pen, and the place where he
sat. This seems a little mythical. Of course the
same people are not on duty. But they say there
is no harm in changing clerks on duty. There can
be no secrets then, no false accounts, no peculation,
and no ruts. At all events, they say that if a man
chooses to go and read at three in the morning, he
has a right to ; and that the Post-Office is estab
lished for the convenience of the citizen, and not
for that of the clerks, which certainly seems true.
The Chief Justice, at twelve, said he was at my
service ; and at my request he took me to the Pub
lic Library, where we spent a couple of hours, —
of which at another time. We then called at his
house, where we found his wife and daughters just
entering their carriage. We did not leave his
little wagon, but all drove off together. The ob
ject was again a bath, with a chowder and fish
dinner at a little extemporized seashore place.
The drive was charming, and the bath Elysium.
The ladies bathed with us. I complimented Mrs.
Lois, as I led her down into the surf, on their
punctuality, saying that they had not kept us
waiting an instant. But she hardly understood me.
" Why should we have kept you ? " said she. " I
had a despatch at noon from my husband, propos
ing that we should all start at two." And when I
asked if they had been waiting, " Why should we
have been waiting?" said she. "We all knew you

My Visit to Sybaris 73

were not to be at home before two." The Chief
Justice laughed and said : " People are so used to
punctuality here, that Lois, who is a home-body,
hardly knows what you are talking about. The
truth is, that, if she had kept you thirty seconds,
while she went back for her gloves, she would have
been afraid of dpTray/jids ; and these girls, — why,
if one of their watches had been a twenty-thou
sandth part of a second wrong when the ball fell at
noon to-day, I should have had no peace till I had
bought such a love of a diamond-mounted little
repeater that there is at Archippus's." And he
laughed at his joke heartily, and the girls said, " Oh,
papa ! "

Girls and boys, men and women, all swim like
fishes, — taught at a very early age. No scholar
is permitted to go forward in any school after
seven years of age, unless he can swim, just as we
require vaccination. " If you mean to be at the
charge of training them," said the Chief Justice,
" it is a pity to have them drowned, just when
they are fit for anything." And so we had a
brisk, jolly swim, and dressed, and went to old
Strepsiades's little cabin, where were fish baked,
fish broiled, fish cooked in every which way con
ceivable, hot from the coals, and we with the real
sea appetite. We lounged round on the bluffs and
shore for an hour or two, the girls sketched and
botanized a little, and by another pretty drive we
came home. I took a cup of tea with them, came
back here to dress, and they then called for me

74 Sybaris and Other Homes

and took me to a pretty dancing-party. But I am
too tired to write it out to-night. Xcupe.

Sunday, 7th Kal. Tharg. — We have a lovely
morning. I have this pretty little note from the
charming Kleone, asking me whether I will go
to their little parish church or to the more grand
cathedral service. Of course I have elected the
parish church with them at eleven. Meanwhile,
I seize this half-hour to fill out one or two gaps
above.

I see I have said nothing about their going and
coming. The sidewalks are all well laid ; and I
have thus far been nowhere where, on one side of
the way at least, there was not one in perfect
order. But I can see that they are very much
tempted not to walk; and I think they get their
exercise more in rowing, swimming, riding, drill,
and so on. This shows itself in the fine chests of
boys and girls, men and women. Not only are
the public conveyances admirable, and dog-cheap,
— very rapid too, so that you feel as if you could
hardly afford to walk, — but they have any num
ber of little steam dog-carts, which run on the
public rail, or, if necessary, on the hard macadam
road. The fuel is naphtha, or what we call petro
leum ; the engines are really high pressure, but
the discharge-pipe opens into a chamber kept
very cold by freezing mixtures, which you can
change at any inn. Philip, who told me about
these things, says they are used, not so much as
being better than horses, but as an economy for

My Visit to Sybaris 75

that immense class of people who keep no ser
vants, do not choose to be slaves to a coachman,
have no one to care for a horse, or indeed do not
want the bother. This little steam-wagon stands
in a shed at the back of the house. Whoever fills
the other lamps fills and trims the wicks of their
burners. When you sit down to breakfast, you
light the lamps. And when your breakfast is done,
steam is up, and you can drive directly to your
store or office. While you are there, it stands a
month if you choose, and is a bill of expense to
nobody. It gives the roads a very brisk look to
see these little things spinning along everywhere.
The party last night was charming in the fresh
ness and variety and ease of the whole thing. I
hope the host and hostess enjoyed it as much as
I did, and they seemed to. How queer the effect
of this individuality is when you come to see it in
costume ! Of course the whole thing was Greek.
You saw that, from the girls' faces down to the
buckles of their slippers. But then the individual
right, to which everything I have seen in Sybaris
seems dedicated, appeared all through, and fairly
made the whole seem like a fancy ball. If I
thought of Cell's Greek costumes, it was only
to think how he would have stared if anybody
had told him that a hundred and fifty miles from
Naples, would he only risk the cutting of his
throat by brigands, he might see the thing illus
trated so prettily. I danced with . Philip has

come to take me to church.

76 Sybaris and Other Homes

Finished the same evening. — It was a pretty
little church, — quite open and airy it would seem
to us, — excellent chance to see dancing vines, or
flying birds, or falling rains, or other " meteors
outside," if the preacher proved dull or the hymns
undevout. But I found my attention was well
held within. Not that the preaching was anything
to be repeated. The sermon was short, unpre
tending, but alive and devout. It was a sonnet,
all on one theme ; that theme pressed, and pressed,
and pressed, again, and of a sudden the preacher
was done. " You say you know God loves you,"
he said. " I hope you do, but I am going to tell
you once more that he loves you, and once more
and once more." What pleased me in it all was
a certain unity of service, from the beginning to
the end. The congregation's singing seemed to
suggest the prayer; the prayer seemed to con
tinue in the symphony of the organ ; and while
I was in revery, the organ ceased ; but as it was
ordered, the sermon took up the theme of my
revery, and so that one theme ran through the
whole. The service was not ten things, like the
ten parts of a concert, it was one act of communion
or worship. Part of this was due, I guess, to this,
that we were in a small church, sitting or kneeling
near each other, close enough to get the feeling
of communion, — not parted, indeed, in any way.
We had been talking together, as we stood in the
churchyard before the service began, and when
we assembled in the church the sense of sympathy

My Visit to Sybaris 77

continued. I told Kleone that I liked the home
feeling of the church, and she was pleased. She
said she was afraid I should have preferred the
cathedral. There were four large cathedrals, open,
as the churches were, to all the town ; and all the
clergy, of whatever order, took turns in conducting
the service in them. There were seven successive
services in each of them that Sunday. But each
clergyman had his own special charge beside, —
I should think of not more than a hundred fam
ilies. And these families, generally neighbors in
the town indeed, seemed, naturally enough, to grow
into very familiar personal relations with each other.
Father Thomas, as they all call him, took me
home to his house to dinner. He had one of those
little steam-wagons which I have described, of
which there were sixty-five standing in the grounds
around the church. His wife and children went
home in a large one. As soon as the doxology
was sung and the benediction pronounced, the
sexton went round with a lantern and lighted their
lamps, and while we stood round talking in the
porch, the steam was got up, so that I suppose
everybody was off in twenty minutes. Father
Thomas said the talk then and there, in the church
and in the porch, was one of the most satisfactory
parts of the whole service, and was pleased when
I quoted firj e<y/caTa\ei7rovTes rrjv eTriavvaycoyrjv
eavrwv.1 I said I had never heard the Greek of
the Greek Testament read in service before. He

1 " Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together."

78 Sybaris and Other Homes

said that the people all followed, with entire interest
and understanding of it, though it is not as near
their Greek as our Bible is to modern English, and
probably never would be. For they regard their
Greek as being better than the Attic Greek of
Demosthenes's time, — and of course they will not
cede an inch toward the Alexandrianisms of late
centuries. "Indeed," said he, uthe Academy and
the Aristarchs are a deal too stiff about it. They
are very hard on us theologues, and seem to
me absurd."

Father Thomas's house is one such as they say
there are a great many of, which show their only
concession to a community system. With all this
intense individualism, one can see that Robert
Owen would hang himself here. But Father
Thomas says this arrangement works well, and is
a great economy both in time and money. Four
houses, each with its half-acre garden, standing
near each other, there is built, just on the corner
where the lots meet, a central house, — pea-oiicia,
they call it, — for the common purposes of the
four. There is one kitchen, and they unite in
hiring one cook, who gets up all the meals for the
four several families in their own homes, accord
ing to their several directions. There is one
large play-room for the children. I asked if there
were one nurse ; but he said, not generally, though
families settled that as they chose. What he laid
most stress on was one book-room or library for
the four. And certainly this was a lovely room.

My Visit to Sybaris 79

There were four bookcases, — one on each side, —
which held severally the books of the four families.
All Father Thomas's were together. But, in the
long run, it happened that none of them duplicated
the other's books, so far as they kept them in this
room. There would be but one Herodotus, one
Dante, one Shakespeare, one French Dictionary,
for the four. Then this room made a pleasant
place of reunion among the families, without
mutual invitation, and without the feeling that you
might be boring the others. Indeed, I spent the
evening there, — as will appear, if this narrative
ever comes down to the evening.

In the afternoon I had a long walk with Father
Thomas in his parish. We went first to one of the
four cathedrals, where he had the three o'clock
service. The congregation was from all parts of
the town and neighborhood, — many people at
tending there, he said, who never went to any
of the parish churches. The different clergymen
take these services in order. I should think there
were four or five thousand persons here. The ser
vice lasted an hour, and he then took me from
place to place with him, showing me, as he said,
how people lived. And so I have had, in very
short time, insight into a wider range of homes
than I have ever had in Europe. Everywhere
comfort, and the most curious illustrations of what
comfort is.

Their system seems to give more definiteness to
the work of the clergy and of the churches than

8o Sybaris and Other Homes

ours does. Thus Father Thomas preaches regu
larly in the church I was in this morning (TT}<? ZCOTJS
al&vfov is its name, — the Church of Life Eternal).
There gather perhaps a hundred families, from all
parts of the city and neighborhood. And as I
understand it, his relations to them are much like
those of one of our Congregational ministers to his
flock, — say Haliburton's to his in Cairo, or mine
to my people when I was settled in Naguadavick.
But this is rather a personal relation between him
and these people, who have, so to speak, gravitated
toward him. He preaches there usually once
every Sunday, and, as I understand it, our practice
of exchanging pulpits is wholly unknown. They
would be as much surprised, on going into the
" Church of Life Eternal," to find any minister but
Father Thomas, as they would be, on going into
court for the trial of a case, to find that the counsel
they had engaged had made an "exchange" with
some other man, who had come to plead in his
place. As I have said, the service here seems to
be regarded, at law at least, as a secondary part of
the matter. This Church of Life Eternal is re
garded as in a thousand ways responsible for a
whole vo/xo? or territorial district, in one corner
of which, indeed, it stands. It is exactly like the
theory of our territorial parish; but they do not
use the word " parish," irapoiKia, or rather they use
it for a different thing. Everybody in the nomos
of "Life Eternal," numbering say four hundred
families, is under the oversight, not so much of

My Visit to Sybaris 8 1

Father Thomas, as of all the committees, visitors,
deacons, deaconesses, and people with names un
known to me, who are the workers of this church.
"Under the oversight" means that this church
would be disgraced if there were a typhus-fever
district in this nomos, or if a family starved to
death here, or if there were a drunken row. It
would be considered that the church of the nomos
was not doing the thing for which churches are
established here.

Father Thomas reminded me that, in the news
paper reports of criminal trials, I always see, next
the name of the offender, the name of his nomos,
as " South Congregational," " St. Paul's," " Old
North," " Disciples'," — " Life Eternal," said he,
" if we had been so unlucky. But none of our
people have been before the court for thirty-one
years. In consequence," he said, " if such a mis
fortune did happen to us, I should not hear the
last of it for a month. Every man I met in the
street would stop me to sympathize with me ; and
I should know that people considered that we had
made some bad mistake in our arrangements, if we
should have a series of such things happen. Of
course, we cannot help people's throwing them
selves away. But if it is supposed that, if Chris
tianity means anything, it means that Jesus Christ
came to take away the sins of the world; and this
church is regarded as his representative, at least
so far as that vulgar or concrete form of sin goes
which men call crime."

6

82 Sybaris and Other Homes

I take it this arrangement by which a fixed
organization is responsible in every locality for the
prevention of poverty and the prevention of crime
has a great deal to do with the curious insignifi
cance of their criminal business in the courts.

I am terribly tired, but feel as if I understood
them a little better than I did yesterday.

Monday, 6th. — A busy day; but, warned by
yesterday, I have not fagged myself out as I did
then. Or, rather, I ought to say, I have taken their
advice, instead of living in my own fashion. I am
really becoming a Sybarite myself, and therefore sit
down here at 9.30 at night, not dead knocked up
by the day's work, as a Yankee would be, and as I
was yesterday.

The programme was, breakfast with the boat-
builder Pylades ; then to go through the schools
with Kleone, who takes a good deal of interest in
them ; to drive and bathe with Philip's people ; to
dine with the Angelides, — nice people whom I
met at the party, Friday, — and with them go to
their theatre, where their daughters were to act.
All this is over, and I am here at 9.30, as before
said.

They make much account of breakfast parties,
I noticed on Saturday that the Chief Justice said
he liked to see people before they had begun to
go to sleep, and that most people did begin to go
to sleep at noon. Here was, at eight o'clock in the
morning, a charming party, just evenly divided

My Visit to Sybaris 83

between men and women, round a large, circular
table, in a beautiful room opening on a veranda.
The table blazed with flowers, and even with early
fruit from the forcing-houses. I took out Kleone,
but the talk was general.

I asked Philip how long his brother would
remain in the office of Proxenus. Philip turned a
little sharply on me, and asked if I had any com
plaints to make. I soothed him by explaining
that all that I asked about was the term of office
in their system, and he apologized.

" He will be in as long as he chooses, probably.
In theory he remains in until a majority of the
voters, which is to say the adult men and women,
join in a petition for his removal. Then he will be
removed at once. The government will appoint a
temporary substitute, and order an election of his
successor."

" Do you mean there is no fixed election-day? "

" None at all/' said Philip. " We are always
voting. When I left you yesterday afternoon I
went in to vote for an alderman of our ward, in
place of a man who has resigned. I wish I had
taken you in with me, though there was nothing to
see. Only three or four great books, each headed
with the name of a candidate. I wrote my name
in Andrew Second's book. He is, on the whole, the
best man. The books will be open three months.
No one, of course, can vote more than once,
and at the end of that time there will be a count,
and a proclamation will be made. Then about

84 Sybaris and Other Homes

removal ; any one who is dissatisfied with a public
officer puts his name up at the head of a book in
the election office. Of course there are dozens of
books all the time. But unless there is real in
capacity, nobody cares. Sometimes, when one
man wants another's place, he gets up a great
breeze, the newspapers get hold of it, and every
body is canvassed who can be got to the spot.
But it is very hard to turn out a competent officer.
If in three months, however, at all the registries, a
majority of the voters express a wish for a man's
removal, he has to go out. Practically, I look in
once a week at that office to see what is going on.
It is something as you vote at your clubs."

" Did you say women as well as men? " said I.

" Oh, yes," said Philip, " unless a woman or a man
has formally withdrawn from the roll. You see,
the roll is the list, not only of voters, but of sol
diers. For a man to withdraw, is to say he is a
coward and dares not take his chance in war.
Sometimes a woman does not like military service,
and if she takes her name off I do not think the
public feeling about it is quite the same as with
a man. She may have things to do at home."

" But do you mean that most of the women serve
in the army? " said I.

" Of course they do," said he. " They wanted
to vote, so we put them on the roll. You do not
see them much. Most of the women's regiments
are heavy artillery, in the forts, which can be
worked just as well by persons of less as of more

My Visit to Sybaris 85

muscle, if you have enough of them. Each regi
ment in our service is on duty a month, and in
reserve six. You know we have no distant posts."

" We have a great many near-sighted men in
America," said I, " who cannot serve in the army."

" We make our near-sighted men work heavy
guns, serve in light artillery, or, in very bad cases
we detail them to the police work of the camps,"
said he. " The deaf and dumb men we detail to
serve the military telegraphs. They keep secrets
well. The blind men serve in the bands. And
the men without legs ride in barouches in state
processions. Everybody serves somewhere."

" That is always the reason," said I, with a sigh,
" why everybody has so much time in Sybaris ! "

Being so much with Kleone, — spending, indeed,
an hour quietly at their house, after our school
tramp, and before we went to bathe, — I got a
chance to ask her about household administration.
I did not know whether things did go as easily as
they seemed, or whether, as with most households,
when strangers are visiting for a time, they seemed
to go easier than they did. But I think there can
not be much deception about it. Kleone is not in
the least an actress, and she certainly wondered
that I thought there could be so much difficulty.
She finally took me out into her kitchen, pantry,
and so on, and showed me the whole machine.

I do not understand it a great deal better than I
did before. But here are a few central facts. First,
no washing of clothes is done in any private

86 Sybaris and Other Homes

house. For every thirty or forty families there is
one laundry, — \ovrpdv, they call it ; and the peo
ple there send twice a week for the soiled linen,
and return it clean at the end of forty-eight hours.
Kleone said that these establishments were so
small that she knew all the work-people at that
near hers; and if she had any special directions to
give, she ran in and told what she wanted. Of
course they could have all the mechanism they
wanted, — large mangles, steam-dryers, folding
machines, and so on. Next, I should think their
public baking establishments must be better than
ours. Kleone no more thought of making her own
bread than my Polly thinks of making her own
candles. " I can make it," said she, with a pretty
air ; " but what 's the good (ro> /eaXo>), when I know
they do it as well as I?" For other provant,
there is the universal trattoria system of all Italy,
carried on with a neatness and care of individual
right, not to say whim, which I find everywhere
here.

I took care to ask specially about servants, and
the ease or difficulty of finding and of training
them. Here Kleone was puzzled. It was evident
she had never thought of the matter at all, any
more than she had thought of water-supply, or of
who kept the streets clean. But after a good deal
of pumping and cross-questioning, I came at some
notion of why this was all so easy. In the first
place, there is not a very great amount of what we
call menial service to be done in establishments

My Visit to Sybaris 87

where there are no stairs, no washing, no ironing,
no baking, no moving, few lamps to fill, little dust
ing or sweeping (because all roads and streets here
are watered), few errands, and little sickness. But
Kleone did not in the least wink out of sight the
fact that there was regular service to be done, and
that it did not do itself. But, as she said, " as no
girl goes to school between fourteen and eighteen,
and no boy or girl ever goes to school more than
half the time, — as no girl under eighteen or boy
under twenty-one is permitted to work in the fac
tories, or indeed anywhere unless at home, — there
is an immense force of young folks who must be
doing something, and must be trained to do some
thing. You see," said Kleone, " no girl is married
before she is eighteen, and perhaps she may not
be married before she is twenty-five. From these
unmarried women, who are of age after they are
eighteen, we may hire servants. And we may re
ceive into our houses girls under that age, if only
we exact no duties of them but those of home.
Now, if you will think," said she, " in any circle of
a hundred people, — say in any family of brothers,
sisters, and cousins, — there are enough young
people to do all this work you ask about. All we
have to do is to exchange a little. That pretty
girl who let you in at the door is a cousin of my
husband's who is making a long three months' visit
here, — glad to come, indeed, for it is a little quiet,
I think, at Trcezene, where her people live. I do
not pretend to be a notable housekeeper, you

88 Sybaris and Other Homes

know; but if I were, I should have any number
of girls' mothers asking me if I would not have
them here to stay, and they would do most of my
dusting and bed-making for me. Elizabeth, whom
I believe you have not seen, is the only person I
hire, in the house. She will be married next year,
but there are plenty more when she goes."

Speaking of Sophia's letting me in at the door,
there is a pretty custom about door-bells. To
save you from fumbling round of a dark evening,
the bell-pulls are made from phosphorescent wood,
or some of them of glass with a glow-worm on a
leaf inside, so that you always see this little knob,
and know where to put your hand.

The plays were as good and bright as they
could be. The theatre is small, but large enough
for ordinary voices and ordinary eyes. There are
ever so many of them. Then the actors and
actresses were these very people whom I have
been meeting, or their children, or their friends.
The Chief Justice himself took a little part this
evening, and that pretty Lydia, his daughter, sang
magnificently. She would be a prima donna as-
soluta over at Naples yonder. Father Thomas's
daughter is a contralto. She does not sing so
well. I do not suppose the Chief is often on the
stage ; but he was there to-night, just as he might
be at a Christmas party in his own house. He
said to me as he walked home with me : " We are
not going to let this thing slip into the hands of a
lot of irresponsible people. As it stands, it brings

My Visit to Sybaris 89

the children pleasantly together ; and they always
have their entertainments where their fathers and
mothers do."

A funny thing happened as we left the play. A
sudden April shower had sprung up, and so we
found the porches and passage-ways lined with
close-stacked umbrellas ; they looked like mus
kets in an armory. Every gentleman took one,
and those of the ladies who needed. Angelides
handed one to me. It seems that the city owns
and provides the umbrellas. When I came to the
inn, I put mine in the hall, and that was the last I
shall see of it. But I have inquired, and it seems
that, as soon as the rain is over, the agent for this
district will come round in a wagon and collect
them. If it rain any day when I am here, a waiter
from the inn will run and fetch me one. I shall
carry it till the rain is over, and then leave it any
where I choose. The agent for that district will
pick it up and place it in the umbrella-stand for
the nomos. In case of a sudden shower, as this
to-night, it is, of course, their business to supply
churches or theatres.

I have noticed another good thing about um
brellas. A man in front of me that day it rained
had a letter to post at a box which was on a street-
lamp. If he had had to hold his umbrella with
one hand, to open the box with another, and to
drop in the letter with a third, it would have been
awkward, for he had but two hands. So they had
made the cover of the box with a ring-handle,

90 Sybaris and Other Homes

he opened it with his umbrella hand, catching the
ring with the hook of the umbrella, and posted
his letter with his other hand.

Tuesday, 5th. — Fine again. I have been with
the boys a good deal to-day. They took me to
one or two of the gymnasiums, to one of the swim
ming-schools, to the market for their nomos, and
afterward to an up-town market, to the picture-
gallery, TrivaKoOrjfcr], and museum of yet another
nomos, which they thought was finer than theirs,
and to their own sculpture-gallery.

As we walked I asked one of them if I was not
keeping him from school.

" No," said he ; " this is my off-term."

"Pray, what is that?"

"Don't you know? We only go to school three
months in winter and three in summer. I thought
you did so in America. I know Mr. Webster did.
I read it in his Life."

I was on the point of saying that we knew now
how to train more powerful men than Mr. Webster,
but the words stuck in my throat, and the boy
rattled on.

" The teachers have to be there all the time, ex
cept when they go in retreat. They take turns
about retreat. But we are in two choroi; I am
choros-boy now, James is anti-choros. Choros
have school in January, February, March, July,
August, September. Next year I shall be anti-
choros."

My Visit to Sybaris 91

" Which do you like best, — off-term or school? "
said I.

" Oh, both is as good as one. When either be
gins, we like it. We get rather sick of either before
the three months are over."

" What do you do in your off-terms? " said I,—
" go fishing? "

" No, of course not," said he, " except Strep, and
Hipp, and Chal, and those boys, because their
fathers are fishermen. No, we have to be in our
fathers' offices, we big boys ; the little fellows, they
let them stay at home. If I was here without you
now, that truant-officer we passed just now would
have had me at home before this time. Well, you
see they think we learn about business, and I guess
we do. I know I do," said he, " and sometimes I
think I should like to be a Proxenus when I am
grown up, but I do not know."

I asked George about this, this evening. He
said the boy was pretty nearly right about it.
They had come round to the determination that
the employment of children, merely because their
wages were lower than men's, was very dangerous
economy. The chances were that the children
were overworked, and that their constitution was
fatally impaired. "We do not want any Man
chester-trained children here." Then they had
found that steady brainwork on girls, at the grow
ing age, was pretty nearly slow murder in the long
run. They did not let girls go to school with any
persistency after they were twelve or fourteen.

92 Sybaris and Other Homes

After they were twenty they might study what
they chose.

" But the main difference between our schools
and yours," said he, " is that your teacher is only
expected to hear the lesson recited. Our teacher
is expected to teach it also. You have in America,
therefore, sixty scholars to one teacher. We do
not pretend to have more than twenty to one
teacher. We do this the easier because we let no
child go to school more than half the time ; nor, even
with the strongest, more than four hours a day.

" Why,'* said he, " I was at a college in America
once, where, with splendid mathematicians, they had
had but one man teach any mathematics for thirty
years. And he was travelling in Europe when I
was there. The others only heard the recitations
of those who could learn without being taught."

" I was once there," said I.

. . . We bathed in the public bath for this
nomos, which is not the same as George's. The
boys took me home with them to dine, and
George came round here this evening. We have
had pleasant talk with some lemon and orange
farmers from the country.

I have not said anywhere that their acquajuoli
are everywhere in the streets ; and a little acid in
the water, with plenty of ice and snow, seems to
take away the mania for wine or liquor, just as it
does in Naples. The temperance of Naples is due,
not to the sour wine people talk of, for the labor-

My Visit to Sybaris 93

ing men do not drink that, but to the attractive
provision made of other drinks. And it is very
much so here. These acquajuoli are just like
those in Naples.

But here no street cuts another at right angles.
There is always a curve at the corner, with a chord
of a full hundred feet. This enables them to have
narrower streets, — no street is more than fifty feet
between the sidewalks, — and it gives pretty stands
for the fruit-sellers and lemonade-sellers at the
quadrants. There is iced water free everywhere,
and delicious coffee almost free.

Wednesday, fyth. — As soon as breakfast was
over, I went down to Pylades, the boat-builder. I
own it, I am distressed to say that he is exactly in
time, and the boat, to all purposes, is repaired.
She is a much better boat than she ever was
before. They know no such thing as a mechanic
being an hour late in his performance of a contract.
" The man does not know his business if he cannot
tell when he will be done," said Pylades to me.
And when I asked what would have happened if
his men had not finished this job in time, he shook
his head and said : " dpTrayfios. I should have
taken from a citizen what I could not restore ;
namely, the time you had to wait beyond my
promise." I said it was very kind in him to count
me as a citizen.

As to that, he said fevta, or the duties of hospi
tality were even more sacred than those of citizen-

94 Sybaris and Other Homes

ship ; and he quoted the Greek proverb, which I
had noticed on the city seal: Alo-^vvrj TroXetw?
TToXiVft) dpapTia, — " The shame of the city is the
fault of the citizen."

I cannot see that there is any sort of excuse for
my loitering here longer than to-morrow. The
paint will be dry and the stores (what a contrast
to what I sailed with!) will be on board to-night.
Among them all, I believe they will sink her with
oranges and cigars, sent as personal presents to
me by my friends.

Andrew took me through some of the registra
tion offices. They carry their statistics out to a
charm ; I could not but think how fascinated Dr.
Jarvis would be. But they say, and truly enough,
that nothing can be well done in administration
unless you know the facts. Take railroads, for
instance ; if you know exactly how many people
are going to come down town from a particular
nomos, you can provide for them. But if you do
not, they must trust to chance. They know here,
and can show you, how many men they have who
are twenty-three years and seven days old, or any
other age ; and every night, of course, they know
what is the population of the country in every
ward of the whole government.

By appointment, I met the Chief Justice as he
adjourned the court, and we rode to the Pier for
our last bath. Delicious surf!

I asked him about something which Kleone said,
which had surprised me. She said no woman was

My Visit to Sybaris 95

married till she was eighteen, and that she might
not be till she was twenty-five. I did not like to
question her; but he tells me everything, and I
asked him. He went into the whole history of
the matter in his reply, and the system is certainly
very curious.

He bade me remember the fundamental import
ance, as long ago as the laws of Charondas, of
marriage in the state. " The unit with us," he
said, " is the ' one flesh,' the married man and
woman. We consider no unmarried man as more
than a half, and so with woman." Then he went
on to say that they had formerly a hopeless im
broglio of suits, — breach-of-promise cases, divorce
cases, cases of gossip, and so on, which had resulted
in the present system ; and, without quoting words,
I will try to describe it. Kleone was right. No
woman may marry before she is eighteen. They
hold it as certain that, before she is twenty-five,
she will have met her destiny. They say that, if
no gossip, or manoeuvring, or misunderstanding
intervene, it is certain that before she is twenty-
five, in a simple state of society like this, which
places no bar on the free companionship of men
and women, the husband appointed for her in
heaven will have seen her and made himself
known to her. They say that there is no unfair
compulsion to his free-will if they intimate to him
that he must do this within a certain time. If it
happen that she do not find this man before that
age, she must travel away from Sybaris for thirty

96 Sybaris and Other Homes

years, or until she has married abroad. They
regard this as exile, which these people, so used
to a comfortable life, consider the most horrible
of punishments. To tell the truth, I do not won
der. Practically, however, it appears that the
punishment is never pronounced. More male
children are born into the state than female. This
alone indicates that the age of marriage for men
must be somewhat higher than that of women.
Their custom is, keeping the maximum age of
men's marriage at thirty, for the Statistical Board
to issue every three months a bulletin, stating what
is the minimum age. Just now it is twenty-three
years, one month, and eleven days. If a man does
not choose to marry here when he is thirty, he
spends thirty years in travel, looking for the wife
he has not found at home. But, as I say of the
women, practically no one goes."

I said that I thought this was a very stern statute,
and that it interfered completely with the right of
the individual citizen, which they pretend was at
the bottom of their system. The Chief Justice
said, in reply, that everybody said so. " L'Estrange
said so to me in England, and Kleber said so to
me in Germany, and Chenowith said so to me in
America, and Juarez said so to me in Bolivia. But
the truth is, that it is absolutely certain that before
a woman is twenty-five, and before a man is thirty,
each of them has met his destiny or hers. If the
two destinies do not run into one, it is because
some infernal gossip, or misunderstanding, or

My Visit to Sybaris 97

ignorance, or other cause, — I care not what, —
intervenes. Now," said he, "you know how
hard we are on gossip, since Charondas's time,
' No tale-bearer shall live.' What is left is to see
that sentiment, or modesty, or self-denial, or the
other curse, as above, shall not intervene to defeat
the will of Heaven. For in heaven this thing is
done. I can assure you," said he, " that this calm,
steady pressure of an expressed determination that
people shall carry out their destiny, saves myriads
of people from misunderstanding and misery ; and
that, in practice, no individual right is sacrificed.
I know it," he added, after a moment, " for I am
the person who must know it. It is not true that
all marriages are made here by the Lord Chancellor,
— as Dr. Johnson proposed. But it is true that I
send into exile the people who will not marry.
How many do you think I have exiled, now, in
thirteen years? "

I guessed, for a guess' sake, five hundred.

" Not one," said the Chief Justice. " No, nor
ever seemed to come near it but once. Every
three months there is a special day set apart when
the Statistical Board shall send me the lists. For
a fortnight before the day there are a great many
marriages. When the day comes, I go, Colonel
Ingham, into an empty court-room, and sit there
for three hours. No officers of court are per
mitted to be present but myself. Once it happened
that when I went in I found a fine young officer, a
man whom I knew by sight, sitting there waiting

7

98 Sybaris and Other Homes

his sentence. I bowed, but said nothing. I took
my papers, and asked him if he would come in
again at eleven. At half-past ten came in a
woman whom I had watched since she was a child,
one of those calm, even-balanced people, who are
capable of blessing the world, but are so unselfish
that they may be pushed one side into washing
dishes for beggars. She had her veil down, but
walked to the bench, and laid her card before me.
I pointed her a seat, and went on with my writing.
As the clock struck eleven, I asked her to excuse
me for a moment, and I withdrew. I stayed in
my private room an hour. I came back at noon,
— and my lieutenant-colonel and my queenly
Hebe were both gone. It was the victory of a
young love. He had worshipped her since they
were at school together, and she him. But some
tattling aunt — she died just in time to save her
self from the galleys — put in some spoke or
other, I know not what, that blocked their wheels ;
she had calmly said ' No ' to a hundred men, and
he had passed like a blind, deaf man among a
thousand women. Both pf them were ready to go
into exile, rather than surrender the true loyalty
of youth. But I had the wit to leave them to
each other. They were married that afternoon,
and all is well ! "

And to-morrow night I shall be jotting my
entries here as the sea pitches me up and down
in the gulf. When shall I see all these nice friends

My Visit to Sybaris 99

again? I feel as if I had known them since we
were born. I cannot yet analyze the charm. I
believe I do not want to. They certainly do not
pretend to be saints. They have rather the com
plete self-respect of people who do not think of
themselves at all. The state cares for the citizen,
and for nothing else. There is no thought of con
quest ; nay, they court separation from the world
outside. But, on the other hand, the citizen cares
for the state, — seems to see that he is lost if this
majestic administration is not watching over him
and defending him. Because the law guards their
individual rights, even their individual caprices,
there is certainly less tyranny of Mrs. Grundy and
of fashion. But yet I never lived among people
who had so little to say about their own success,
— about " I said," " I told him," or " my way," or
" I told my wife."

When I spoke to the Chief the other day of
their homage to individual right, he said they
made the citizen strong because they would make
the state strong, and made the state strong that it
might make the citizen strong. I quoted Fichte :
" The human race is the individual, of which men
and women are the separate members." " Fichte
got it from Paul," said he. " If you mean to have
a sound mind in a sound body, you must have a
sound little finger and a clear eye. But you will
not have a clear eye, or a sound little finger,
unless you have a sound mind in a sound body.
Colonel Ingham, — Love is the whole ! "

i oo Sybaris and Other Homes

It has been a pretty bleak evening. I have
been running round with George to say good-bye.
Kleone asked me, so prettily, when I would come
with MapidSiov. It was half a minute before I
reflected that MapidSiov is Greek for Polly.

Thiirsday, 3d Kal. @apyrj\. — At the boat at
8.30. The old man was there without the boys.
He said they wanted to stay here.

" Among the devils ? " said I.

The old man confessed that the place for poor
men was the best place he ever saw ; the markets
were cheap, the work was light, the inns were
neat, the people were civil, the music was good,
the churches were free, and the priests did not lie.
He believed the reason that nobody ever came
back from Sybaris was, that nobody wanted to.

The Proxenus nodded, well pleased.

" So Battista and his brother would like to stay
a few months ; and he found he might bring Cat-
erina too, when my Excellency had returned from
Gallipoli ; or did my Excellency think that, when
Garibaldi had driven out the Bourbons, all the
world would be like Sybaris?"

My Excellency hoped so, but did not dare
promise.

" You see now," said George, " why you hear
so little of Sybaris. Enough people come to us.
But you are the only man I ever saw leave Sybaris
who did not mean to return."

My Visit to Sybaris i o i

" And I," said I, — " do you think I am never
coming here again?"

" You found it a hard harbor to make," said the
Proxenus. " We have published no sailing direc
tions since Saint Paul touched here, and those
which he wrote — he sent them to the Corinthians
yonder — neither they nor any one else have
seemed to understand."

4< Good-bye."

" God bless you ! Good-bye." And I sailed
for Gallipoli.

Wind N. N. W. strong. I have been pretty
blue all day. And the old man is too. It is just
7.30 P. M. The lights of the Castle of Otranto are
in sight, and I shall turn in. Xat/oe.

HOW THEY LIVED AT NAGUADAVICK

FROM REV. FREDERIC INGHAM'S PAPERS

NAGUADAVICK was in itself, of nature, like
any other town, only a good deal worse. I
mean that the lake took up all one side of it, so
nobody could live there. Then on the river front
nobody would live if he could. Out on the roads
to Assabet and Plimquoddy you could get no
water that anybody would drink. So it happened
that in the town proper everybody had to live on
the north side. This made land there dear, and
would have made rents very high if we had not
found out a much better way to live, — of which
I am now going to give you the history.

"In balloons?"

Not a bit of it. There is no word of nonsense
in what I am going to tell you. It is only a thing
perfectly practicable in every spirited American
town which needs it, and the only wonder is that
it was not done in every such town long ago. It
has been tried for, everywhere, in a fashion, and it
only needs brains, and enterprise, and faith in men,
to carry it out everywhere with success.

How They Lived at Naguadavick 103

It all began at a meeting of their Union.
"Trade's Union?" Not exactly. In a Trade's
Union only one trade meets. This was a meeting
of all sorts of people, with trades and without, with
money and without, some with one idea and
some with seven, — a union which they used to
have in a decent sort of club-house they had.
Men and women could go, and did. You played
checkers, or euchre, or billiards, — or you went up
stairs and danced, — or you read in the reading-
room, or you talked in the drawing-room. And in
the committee-room there was almost every even
ing what they called a Section, where something
or other was up, — maybe a tableau, maybe a
debating-club, maybe a paper on the legs of cock
chafers. They called it all the " Union for Chris
tian Work." Well, one night in the committee-
room they had had rather a dreary pow-wow about
the future of Naguadavick. Pretty much all of
them agreed Naguadavick was going to the dogs.
They could not raise pine-apples, and it was evi
dently unhealthy for cats. All the merchants
went to Boston for their spring and fall supplies,
instead of buying them of each other. The
manufacture of horn gun-flints had proved success
ful, but they cost more when they were made than
the stone ones ; and, worst of all, as I have
remarked, there was no chance for anybody to live
anywhere, if the population of the town should en
large by one. For every house was occupied, and
it was known to the presiding officer that at Mrs.

104 Sybaris and .Other Homes

Varnum's boarding-house the mistress had that
day refused to receive a family from out of town
because they had eleven children.

So it was generally agreed that Naguadavick
was going to the dogs as fast as it could go. I
never was in but one thoroughly prosperous town
that was not, if you could trust the talking
kind.

Meanwhile, in fact, Naguadavick was a driving,
thriving, striving, hiving, wiving, and living town
of 23,456 people by the last United States census,
with " probably at the present time rising 36,000,
if only the beggarly and miserly city council had
not refused to take a special count when they levied
the tax last spring."

Ogden went home from that meeting red-hot, he
was so mad. He told his wife all they had said,
and said he could not stand it. She said she
should not think he could. He said it was all
nonsense. She said it certainly was, but she
wished he would not swear so. He said he would
not again, but it was enough to make the minister
swear and burn his books too. She said she
hoped the minister would not burn " Consuelo "
till she had a chance to finish it. This made
Ogden laugh, — it was old Elkanah's nephew : did
you know him? and they went to bed. But Ogden
was thoroughly mad this time ; he said he would
not stand it, and he would not have any more such
talk at the Union. And he did not. They have
talked nonsense there since. But they never

How They Lived at Naguadavick 105

talked this same nonsense. And this was the
way he managed it.

As soon as he had read his letters the next
morning at the mill, and had just walked through
all the rooms (Ogden made whips for export, —
Boothia Felix, — immense demand for sea-horses),
he told his boy he should be out for two hours,
went across to the offices of the Great Eastern
Railway, and charged right in on Greenleaf. Cap
ital fellow, Greenleaf, the best man, I think, and the
most spirited and most spiritual, and the most to be
loved, of all men I have ever known. Greenleaf
had done his letters too, had seen all his heads of
department, and he put down the " Advertiser,"
gave Ogden two chairs, and put his feet in one.

" Why did you not stay in the Section Room,
last night?" said Ogden.

" You know," said Greenleaf. " Why — did
you?"

"Why, indeed," said Ogden again, "unless to
see how far the infernal tomfoolery of croaking
may lead men. It seems to be literally and really
supposed that these people, who have known
enough to dam this river, where there is a quick
sand bottom, — who know enough to make fine
sewing-thread in air so dry that it sparkles, — who
know enough to split a flint into ten thousand mil
lion billion flinders no bigger than the mustache
of a mosquito, — don't know how to live, and will
go off to Death's Hollow, because the boarding-
houses are full. Jove ! Why don't they send us

106 Sybaris and Other Homes

all back to the Lincolnshire Fens and to — what
you call it — old Brewster's place, Ansterfield —
Scrooby — in the edge of York, to-morrow? Why,
the monkeys know more, for they know enough, if
they can't live in one place, to live in another ! "

Thus far, remembering his wife's warning, Ogden
went on, and sinned not with his tongue, nor weak
ened the force of what he said, by any profane ex
aggeration.

Greenleaf laughed, and said he had not heard so
much twaddle as he heard in the five minutes he
was there, and Ogden was much comforted.

So soothed, he began again. " Now, Frank, I
want to stop all this. If it goes on, it may do seri
ous injury. In the first place, such talk will ruin
the Union. Who is going there if that whining,
canting, drivelling old fool is going to talk such
stuff? What 's worse is, it will get into the papers.
They would not put it in the ' Spy ; ' but old Martin
at the ' Courant' is just ass enough to put in some
thing about the decline of our population, and the
unhealthy condition of the muskrats who live under
the long dike. I had to go round there this morn
ing to stop him off this time. Well, of course,
nobody reads their trash ; but, after they have put
it in a few million times, it gets copied somewhere,
and it sticks, and then people will really think this
place has gone up, and not an owl or a jackal will
come here to rear jackets or owlets ! "

"Who is croaking now?" said Greenleaf, laugh
ing. " You did not come here to say that."

How They Lived at Naguadavick 107

" No," said Ogden, standing up, " I did not."
And he walked to the large scale map of the Great
Eastern road. " I came here to show you this."
And he pointed out a spot eleven miles from
Naguadavick, on the line of that road. "What
could you buy the Lemon property here for? "

"House and land, — there are four hundred
acres ; I suppose thirty-five thousand dollars would
be the asking price."

"Yes, — and out here, — the Gregory place?"

Greenleaf said that was not worth so much.
There was more land, but it was poor land, and
the house had been burned down. Ogden said he
did not care how poor the land was, and he sat
down again.

" Tell your directors to buy those two places to
morrow. If you have not got any money, issue
some bonds and get some. Open a new station
where the Sudbury road crosses yours. Cut up
the nine hundred acres into lots of a quarter acre, a
half-acre, and an acre, say, in all, two thousand lots.
These lots will cost you rather less than fifty dollars
apiece, on the average. Fix the price of each lot on
your lithograph plan, and never vary from it. Then
advertise that for twenty years you will run special
trains in, from your new station, at 6, 6.30, and 7
in the morning, and as many more as you choose, —
that you will run them out at 6, 6.30, 7, and 8 in
the evening, and as many more as you choose. Not
one train shall stop on the way, — and every man
shall be in town in twenty-two minutes from the

io8 Sybaris and Other Homes

time he started. Before you are five years older,
if you keep your promises, that station will do a
business of two thousand tickets a day, each way.
In ten years its business will be five thousand
tickets. And your rascally railroad will be blest
of men and angels as a corporation with a soul."

Greenleaf laughed, and locked the door. Then
he opened a large drawer. " Look here," said he.
" When I left you, last night, I came home here
and drew out this plan, not for the Lemon place,
but for the Chenery farm, which is better. We
may take the Gregory property if we like. I have
seen the chief, and he says, ' Go ahead.' He says
he will take it on his own shoulders, — that the
company may not like to carry it long enough.
He says he shall lose nothing on the investment,
and that it will bring up his stock. And so it
will.

" We shall put the lots at twice what they cost us,
for there must be a sure profit, and we shall sell them
as the Illinois Central sells lots, ten per cent down
and ten per cent each year for ten years, on our
asking price, without other interest. The company
guarantees, as you say, fast trains for twenty
years. That will make room for ten thousand
people, Elk."

Elkanah was very much pleased, and they went
into the detail. His two hours went by very fast,
and then he went away. When he had been five
minutes gone, Greenleaf sent for him. " Ogden,"
said he, " don't you think you had better get up a

How They Lived at Naguadavick 109

little earlier in the morning the next time you
advise this road ? " Ogden was good-natured, and
stood the chaff like a man.

II

As soon as Greenleaf had bought the Chenery
farm, and got a bond for a deed of the Gregory
property, if he wanted it, he published the details
of his plan.

Of course all the croakers were sure it would
fail. It had been tried ten thousand times, they
said, and had failed. " Canton, East Boston,
Mount Bellingham, Hyde Park," said the croakers,
who knew nothing at all about the success or
failure of either of these enterprises, " when did not
this plan fail? People won't go where you want
to send them."

" Tell me," said Greenleaf, cheerfully, — he was
the only man worth anything who never got mad
by any accident, — and this, as above, because he
was so spirited and spiritual at once, — " tell me,
when this ship has not sailed, if she was built
before she was launched? I have heard of old
Dutchmen, who built the forecastle of a ship, and
launched it, and it went to the bottom, — and of
cousins of theirs who built the stern first, and
launched that, — and were surprised that it did not
sail ten knots an hour. So, I have heard of people
who laid out cities on paper for their own advan
tage, — and forgot the advantage of their settlers.

1 1 o Sybaris and Other Homes

And I have heard of railroads who opened stations
where no people lived, — and then sold no tickets.
I have heard of new towns opened at way stations,
— and people did not choose to churn along in
snuffy old accommodation trains. But I have
never heard of a place where a man was sure of
four fast trains every morning and four more every
night, that did not fill up in no time."

Down at the Union, one night, Ogden got talk
ing about the new place, and somebody told him
the Parisians would not sleep out of Paris. " No,"
said he, " nor will the people of this place sleep
outside of Naguadavick, if sleeping outside means
that they are to have no fun out there. If there
are to be no parties, no theatre, no concert, no
Union, no chance to croak together, nobody is
going to live there. That is another reason why
you must begin on a large scale. You must have
people enough to make it worth Greenleaf s while
to run four fast trains for you, morning and even
ing. If you have them, you will have people
enough to persuade Blitz to juggle for you, Mrs.
Wood to sing to you, Wendell Phillips and Henry
Beecher to lecture for you, and the French com
pany to act for you. The people who will go to
this place to live are exactly the sort of people
who will put all that thing through. You will have
a better public hall there than we have got here."
And so, indeed, it proved.

I was at that time the minister of the Sande-
manian church at Naguadavick. I believed in

How They Lived at Naguadavick 1 1 1

Greenleaf, and indeed I rather believed in this
thing. So I went round one day and asked him if
they did not mean to reserve lots for churches,
and if they would not let me secure one. " Look
at the plan, Mr. Ingham," said Greenleaf. " You
will see some red crosses there on half-acre lots,
which will be convenient for churches."

I looked, compared, and called his attention to
one which seemed to me the best. I said I did not
know if we could or would do anything about it,
but would they not give us a deed of that lot, on
condition we would use it for a house of worship.

'• We will give you a deed," said Greenleaf, " on
exactly the same terms as we would give the gov
ernment one for a post-office. Those terms you
will find in brief on the plan. That lot is worth
one hundred and twenty dollars, and for that sum
the Sandemanian Consistory can have it. Look
here, Mr. Ingham," said he, " religion, as I under
stand it, is the most essential reality in earth or in
heaven. The institutions of religion, then, as
churches or Sunday-schools, will in no wise put
themselves on the plane of inferior organizations,
as if they must beg for a living or for right to be.
They will assert their right. We shall treat all
institutions of religion with precisely equal respect.
And I believe that the Sandemanians will find it
desirable to buy a lot here now, while they can, to
build by and by, when they want to."

I told him he was quite right ; that the Sandema
nian church, at least, was in no position to ask alms

T i 2 Sybaris and Other Homes

like a beggar. And so the next Sunday morning
I spoke of the thing from the pulpit. I said it
seemed to me we ought to secure a lot there
before the most available situations were taken
up by others. I said that any money I found
in the charity boxes that evening after the two
services would be applied to this purpose. And,
as it happened, I found one hundred and nineteen
dollars and nineteen cents there. Polly had eighty-
one cents lying by, which she added, and we
bought the lot the next morning. A very curious
thing followed. The " Spy " and the " Courant "
mentioned this fact, and before a fortnight was
over the Unitarians, and the Universalists, and the
Methodists, and Free Will Baptists, and Orthodox
Congregationalists, and Baptists, and Episcopalians,
and even Roman Catholics, had each bought lots.
" They did not mean," they said, " to have those
proselyting Sandemanians stepping in before them."
So there seemed to be no danger but Aboo-Goosh,
as they called the new town, would have enough
religious privileges.

Ill

Elkanah Ogden talked so much about the
" Suburb of Ease " at the Union, and in all social
circles, he explained away so many difficulties, and
pooh-poohed down so many objections, that he
came to be considered as a sort of godfather to the
plan ; and all sorts of people consulted him about

How They Lived at Naguadavick 1 1 3

it. After the lithographic plans were printed by
the Great Eastern, and the demand for their house-
lots became very spirited, people began to wake
up who had been very drowsy before, or had said
it was all nonsense, and that nothing could ever
come of it. And all sorts of contrivers came to
Ogden with their plans, and bored him awfully.

Among others there came in one day an old
farmer, whom Ogden did not know from Adam.
But he supposed he had seen him before ; so he
said, " Good-morning, Mr. Jones. Take a chair."

But the old man said, " My name is not Jones.
I live next the Jones farm. My name is Tenny,
Elbridge Tenny. I live out in Knox."

Elkanah apologized.

Then the old man said that he had come to talk
to him about his place. It was a beautiful farm,
he said, sloping down each side of the north branch
which ran right through the place. Putting his
father's place and his together, and throwing in the
jointure property, there was nigh seven hundred
acres in all. By this time Ogden understood that
here was another man who would like to sell by
the foot what had been bought by the acre.

" You see," said the old man, " if you want
horse-cars, the grade is beautiful from each side
down to the Great Northern Road, and the flat,
where the stream bends, is just the place for a
station."

" I dare say, Mr. Jones," said Ogden. " I beg
your pardon, Mr. Eldridge, I dare say. But all

8

ii4 Sybaris and Other Homes

this depends on what the ' Great Northern ' says.
I have never found them very bright, or, which is
much the same thing, very humane."

Mr. Tenny said his name was not Eldridge, and
Ogden apologized again. Tenny had not been to
the Great Northern people ; he had begun by
drawing out his plan for streets, which perhaps
Ogden would like to see. And then he had
thought he would come and consult Mr. Ogden
before he went any further.

" Well, sir," said Elkanah, " I am very much
obliged to you. Now I tell you that your farm
may be as beautiful as the Garden of Eden, and as
well laid out as Alexander's city in Egypt, but
unless the Great Northern does the right thing,
which is to say, the handsome thing, you can do
nothing with the farm in this way. More than
that, Mr. Tenny [this time he was quite correct],
more than that, they may be as handsome as — as
— the Chevalier Crichton, and if you, up there,
are the least bit short-sighted, or try to skin these
workingmen whom you want to plant there, the
whole thing fails again. As I have said forty
times, the enterprise is one combined enterprise,
which seeks everybody's good. It seeks the good
of the honest day-laborer, who is now paying a
dollar a week for his tenement here, it seeks the
good of his children not yet born, it seeks the
good of the Great Northern Railroad and its
stockholders, and it seeks your good. But if any
one of the parties undertakes to overreach any of

How They Lived at Naguadavick 1 15

the others, the whole thing fails and deserves to
fail."

By this time Ogden was unduly excited, and Mr.
Tenny was a little alarmed. But he declared that
he felt all this also, and only wanted to make a
reasonable profit in the business, which he was
willing everybody else concerned should share.
Ogden cooled down, and told him that the merit
of the enterprise was that it offered, not fabulous
profit to anybody, but a perfectly steady and sure
remuneration, — steady and sure, as he proposed
to show. So they walked over together to the
house of the president of the Great Northern. It
was afternoon, and they knew he would not be at
the office. They also knew that in that establish
ment responsibility was very badly divided, and
that he would take it very ill if any such proposal
as this were made to any of his subordinates before
he had heard of it. In fact, if he could be per
suaded, before the week were over, that he had
devised the whole thing, that would be best of
all.

It was very slow work, and, to a person as im
petuous as Elkanah, very tedious. But he kept
his temper like a saint, knowing how much de
pended on that. He let the President ramble off
into endless histories of his own former successes
in dealings with lumbermen, with politicians, and
with owners of water-power, — in all of which, he,
being the painter of the picture, came off victori
ous, and these several lions crouched at his feet.

1 1 6 Sybaris and Other Homes

After many of these rambles into the forests of
facts gilded by memory, he said, well pleased : —

"Then your object is to persuade us to open a
new station at the Bates Crossing? We might,
perhaps, let the milk-trains stop there, — and the
Montaigne special. How would that answer?
That would give you two trains in winter, and three
in summer each way."

Elbridge Tenny looked round dubersome on
Elkanah Ogden, and this time Elkanah blazed
away.

" It would not answer at all, Mr. Chauncey. This
is one of those enterprises where you must do
everything or nothing. The railroads of this part
of the country have steadily cut off their best rev
enue — the most reliable because not subject to
competition — by that policy of leaving their sub
urb travel to their accommodation trains. Unless
we can have at least three morning expresses and
three in the evening, we can do nothing."

It was a wonder Mr. Chauncey did not faint
away, or show them the door as madmen. But
Ogden had expected, even had intended, this sur
prise.

" The people who are to come and go on these
trains, Mr. Chauncey," said he, " are not women
going a-shopping, to whom ten minutes more or
less is of no account. They are not even bank
clerks, or dry-goods dealers, to whom all is gained
if they are on the street here at nine in the morn
ing. We want to provide for the day-laborer, who

How They Lived at Naguadavick 1 17

must get to his work at eight in the winter and at
seven in the summer. We mean to have him, and
his employer, as certain that he will be there, as if
he had only to walk, in fifteen minutes from his
home. You cannot give him that certainty, if he
must wait till your Montaigne train has made its
connections above, and come down to Bates's.
Besides this, we want to promise him a seat sure,
— while he goes and while he comes. He must
not be dependent on the chances of your up-travel.
And when he takes his nap, — if he chooses to,
riding out, — he is not to be waked at six or eight
way stations. He is to be put through."

Mr. Chauncey smiled, — sublime, amused, and
incredulous. But the smile faded when Ogden
proceeded : " These fast trains are promised by
the Great Eastern for the next twenty years, to
people who take lots at Aboo Goosh, and that is
the reason that they have already sold seven hun
dred lots. Offer nothing but way trains, stopping
at all your near stations, and Mr. Tenny here need
take no trouble about surveying his lands. He
will not sell five acres ! "

The President became more thoughtful at this.
"Have you thought what you should offer us?"
said he ; " what bonus would be reasonable to in
duce us to try the experiment? We might put
on one express for three months, and see how it
would work."

" And you would not have passengers enough to
pay for your oil," replied Elkanah. "No, Mr.

i T 8 Sybaris and Other Homes

Chauncey, it is a twenty years' business, or it is
nothing, that we propose to you. There is nobody
now at Bates's but Mr. Eldridge here, and he and
his family will not want many tickets. This busi
ness is to be made. When it is made, it is sure."

" And what inducement do you suggest?" said
the President again, blandly.

" Simply what I have named. Mr. Eldridge
here will be glad to sell you land for your station,
at exactly the same price that he will sell me mine
for my cottage, or the Widow Conley for hers.
On the other hand, if he sells his two thousand
lots, and see his two thousand houses go up in the
next ten years, you can guess how many tickets
you will sell daily."

" But they are tickets sold at a reduced price,"
persisted Mr. Chauncey. " I hate these excur
sions! "

" Pardon me," said Ogden, " there is no reason
why you should put them at a reduced price. Put
them at the price that will pay you best on the
whole. Only announce the price before Mr. Tenny
[name right this time] puts a surveyor on the land,
and never change it for twenty years. The system
is everything."

" Where is not the system everything?" said the
President, pleased with himself for saying some
thing. And he promised to think of it carefully,
for in three hours he had really got interested in
the prospects the plan unfolded, and his visitors
withdrew.

How They Lived at Naguadavick 1 1 9

Two days after, Mr. Chauncey went down to the
office and had a long talk with Plinlimmon, his
superintendent, and Pariss his treasurer. Plinlim
mon was fretting to death, as he heard from day to
day about Aboo Goosh, and thought what golden
chances the Great Northern was losing. But he
knew it would be madness for him to broach any
such plan. Imagine his relief when, after infinite
preface and explanation, Mr. Chauncey told him
how he had been long wishing that they might
build up a local business of their own, so that they
should not be so dependent on those cut-throats of
the Mad River line and the Canadian connection ;
how he had turned over many plans, and finally
had concluded that if they established a station
with several fast trains, say at Bates's cross-roads,
they might build up really a large town there ; how
he had talked with that Mr. Tenny, whom they had
to compromise with, about the land at the Sias
cutting, and found him well disposed to such an
undertaking; and, in short, how he, Chauncey, had
now come down to talk it over with him, Plinlim
mon, and him, Pariss, and if he, Pariss, and he,
Plinlimmon, saw no objections, which did not occur
to him, Chauncey, he, Chauncey, believed he
should send Mr. Stephenson up to make a little
survey, and should bring it before the Board the
next Monday. The two young men were im
mensely interested, immensely sympathetic, asked
very intelligent questions, proposed very modest
objections, and were then driven from these objec-

i 20 Sybaris and Other Homes

tions ; and by the time Mr. Chauncey left them, he
was satisfied that he had planned the village of
Rosedale, at least five years ago. He had left its
name to Mrs. Chauncey, and this was her selec
tion.

As for our other railroad, — the Cattaraugus and
Katahdin, — it never occurred to anybody to sug
gest anything to any of their people; and they
have never had a fast special train from that hour
to this, nor ever will. The only thoroughly origi
nal thing they ever did was to pay in currency
in Naguadavick the interest they had promised
to pay in gold in London.

IV

It was astonishing to see these two towns grow.
You see, it was not the ordinary speculation of sell
ing house-lots to other people, while you do not
go yourself to live there. But both towns were
based on that ingenious Vineland principle. It is
the principle on which Uncle Sam sells his farm-
lots at the West. The price of the lots, once es
tablished, was established forever, so far as the first
holder went. Of course they became more valu
able every day. Of course every man who bought
one whispered to his next friend that there was an
admirable chance next him, if he only seized at
once. Everybody tried to seize at once, and
Aboo Goosh and Rosedale were soon alive with
the hum of the hammer and the buzz of the mortis-

How They Lived at Naguadavick 121

ing-machine. By the time we dedicated the San-
demanian church at Aboo Goosh, and that was
really as soon as we could get up a respectable
church edifice, there were five hundred houses in
habited there. In two years more there were two
thousand.

Anybody will understand how the people with
comfortable incomes lived there. That sort of
people live outside the towns they work in every
where. London, Boston, New York, all places of
size, let the men who receive salaries, and who
begin to work at nine in the morning, live in their
suburbs, — and they all know how to provide for
that class of people. The good fortune of Nagua
davick was, that in these Aboo Goosh and Rosedale
enterprises we provided for the day-laborers also.
The people who worked in the mills, the mere
diggers and builders, who had to stand in rows to
be hired on the blind side of the Phenix Bank,
opposite the Common, the women who sewed in
the cloak-shops, — all found it cheapest and best to
live in the country, and to do their work in town.

I had myself to leave Naguadavick when these
towns had been four years under way. I left it for
no fault on either side, but in consequence of an
unfortunate misunderstanding and entente at a pub
lic meeting, called for the purpose of teaching the
children to hold their knives better at table. But up
till that time I was intimate in both these new towns.
And I may close this account of them with the
notes of my last visit in Rosedale.

122 Sybaris and Other Homes

I called there on an old parishioner of mine,
named Mary Quinn. She hailed originally from
Carrick-on-Suir, but had married Michael Quinn,
who was from a village just outside of Tipperary,
some years before I knew her. She had six or
eight children here, and two in heaven. I hunted
her up in Rosedale, — found her a mile from the
station, on the horse-railroad. They had a regular
system of horse-railroad tracks there, that virtually
passed every man's house. There was a nice
garden round the house, of half an acre, — no
fence, which seemed odd ; but there was hardly a
fence in Rosedale. They had some side hedges,
but made up for stronger fences by strict cattle
laws. The house itself was a clever story-and-a-
half house, such as costs in a country town five
hundred dollars. I found this had cost Quinn
rather more than seven hundred. The lot had cost
him seventy-five. He had paid for that clear, with
money he had in bank. He and his wife had paid
a third part of the cost of the house, and there was
a mortgage on it of four hundred and sixty dollars.
Their Savings Bank there took such mortgages, if
they knew the people. The truth was, that the
land was worth now ten times what the original
price was.

"Well, Mrs. Quinn," said I, "I am glad to see
the little girl so nicely*"

The child, when I saw her last, in one of our
back streets, had been white and puny, worrying
along with the relics of scarlet fever. She was

How They Lived at Naguadavick 123

now rugged, sunburned, freckled, and looked as if
she would like to eat a tenpenny nail.

" Indade she is, your Riverince, and it is hard to
say why, for the medicines are all gone, and we
have not sent for the new doctor since we came
here."

This was a stroke of humor on Mrs. Quinn's part.
She knew well enough that her children were
growing up to a constitution like her own because
they were growing up in the same way as she did.

"But the boys, your Riverince, they are the
handsomest sight, if you could only see them.
They 're all gone now for blackberries, — or for
I don't know what ; for, indeed, the fields here are not
like what we had at Carrick-on-Suir, — but they
are grown so big and so brown that you would not
know them."

" And how does there come enough to eat, if
they are so big and hungry?"

"There, again," said she, with the pride with
which the hunter praises his hounds, and the
farmer his grounds, and the bishop his lawn. She
flung open the door of the neat kitchen we were
sitting in, and pointed to the well-hoed potato-
patch behind the house, and to the rows of comely
cabbages behind them, — as if she had compassed
sea and land, lived at the Five Points and in North
Street, and now in Ba«k-street-court-place in
Naguadavick, not in vain, if she could only have
her own potatoes at the last. Of them she said
nothing ; but, with that speaking wave of the hand

1 24 Sybaris and Other Homes

which would have become Rachel herself: "And
the milk, your Riverince, which cost us ten cents a
quart in town, is only six cents here. Half the
neighbors have cows, and it is handier for them to
let my boys milk for them, and pay them in milk,
than to hire for money. For they don't all have
boys as fine as mine," said Mary, who had her
weak points, like the rest of us. "For butcher's
meat we have more than ever, and it costs us less.
Two pigs my man brought up last year on the
place here, and though they said the pork was not
the fattest, it made a big place in the bill anyway,
for the butcher allowed us all it was worth, or he
said he did, and surely that was a good deal more
than nothing."

Then I cross-questioned Mary about their social
life, tried to make her own that she felt the want
and the excitements and amusements open to her
in Back-street-court-place ; but there was no crav
ing for their flesh-pots. Pretty clearly, her " man "
was more of a man here, and she was more of
a woman. Why? Why, because they held Real
Estate. Real very emphatic, and with a very large
R, — and Estate with a very large E. What is it
Jupiter ordains? I am writing at No. 9, in the 3d
range, and must quote from memory : —

" The day
That makes a man a slave takes half his life away."

Well, he might have added, if it were he, and I
believe it was not, he might have added : —

How They Lived at Naguadavick 125

" When he can
Say, * This lot of land is mine,' he 's twice a man."

There is no need to be sentimental about it,
but that is the living fact. The glory of New
England as she was, was that every man was a
freeholder.

" My man," said Mary, affecting not to boast, but
really running over with pride, " my man does not
have much time for the garden. He just cuts at
the trees a little, and looks at the boys' work, and
taches them a little about the pig; but after supper
he has to dress himself and go to the meeting of
the co-operative store, where he is manager, or he
sings in the bass in the International Club, or he
takes his turn on the sanitary committee of the
Union." Poor Mike, too, then, he had come to
enjoy the sweets of " eventful living," and his wife
had come to the pride of having her husband
" sough t-arter," second only to the pride of being
" sought-arter," herself, in the not forgotten days
of seventeen.

Boys and girls both might now be trusted out
doors; and outdoors was a joy and delight to
their mother as to them. There was no longer
the horrid watch and anxiety there had been in
the wynds and courts of the city. Every summer
the large market farmers who surrounded them at
Rosedale were glad enough to hire the children on
jobs to pick peas and beans and the small fruits ;
and, in fact, we got our vegetables the better in
the city market, because we had sent, not an orna-

1 26 Sybaris and Other Homes

mental, but a working population, to our suburbs.
It was their gain, and it was ours too.

Mary's grandest moment was when she asked
me to tea. When I got up to go she said, with a
reality far beyond any of the tones of artificial
civility, that I must stay to see the children and
take a cup of tea. In Back-street-court-place she
would have welcomed me had I looked into the
crowded kitchen parlor bed-room at tea-time, but
had I come in before tea-time she would no more
have asked me to stay than she would have asked
me to hear her square the hypothenuse. But now
I should not see the children, nor Mike, she said,
unless I stayed to tea. And she was sure I should
be late at home, which was true ; and I was glad I
stayed, because I saw the children, which was best
of all.

In they came, clattering and explaining, — the
youngest first, by some miraculous law, then two
or three of the biggest, then a miscellaneous assort
ment, wound up with him, always the last, who had
on this occasion got into the brook, and brought
in his shoes in his hand. Clattering and enthusi
astic were all the party, each telling his part of the
story on a somewhat high key, and all explaining
about the quantity and quality of the berries,
which were indeed manifold. Mary sympathized,
applauded, wondered, and quieted, tried to bring
them to consciousness that the old minister was
there, promised that they should have the black
berries for tea and for breakfast, bade Phelim and

How They Lived at Naguadavick i 27

Owen go quick for the milk, whispered to Mary
Ann that she was to run to the baker's and buy
some tea-cakes, and bade the others go quick to
their rooms and wash themselves and brush their
hair that they might be ready.

Their rooms ! Why did not she say their thrones
or their palaces? Heavens! had not I seen all
those children lying asleep together in one room,
fifteen feet by twelve, in which all the cooking of
that family had been done that day, — all Mrs.
Aminidab Johnson's family washing done, — and
in which the white muslin dress that Selina John
son wore to a birthday ball the next night was
ironed while those children slept, so that Phelim
and Owen might carry it home in the morning?
Such, dear reader, is the stowage in every Back-
street-court-place within half a mile of where you
read these lines ! Their rooms, indeed !

" And come into the sitting-room yourself, ' your
Riverence,' " continued Mary. " I would have
asked you in before, but it seems more sociable
here, and more like old times." Nor had she rea
son to apologize for her well-blacked Banner, her
neat kitchen table, and brilliant tin ware, nor for
the pretty garden view before which I had been
sitting. But I went into the sitting-room, knowing
1 must be out of the way now while she " got tea."

Reader, I have taken tea with that same woman's
sister Margaret in the cabin both were born in,
outside Carrick-on-Suir. It was a stone cabin with
a mud floor ; a partition of board partly separated

128 Sybaris and Other Homes

us from the pig, who had the front of the doorway,
but who was visible to the inquiring eye. I made
my call at twilight, and found Mary's nieces and
nephews seated on low blocks, or on their heels,
looking in the fire of peat. One of them ran for
Margaret, to whom I had come to bring a message
three thousand miles, from Mary. Instantly, when
she appeared, had a troop of ravens been sent out
to borrow tea and sugar, that I might feast; in
stantly had two oat-cakes been set up against the
stones on the hearth ; soon had the kettle boiled
and the tea been ready, and then we had all re
paired into Margaret's bedroom, — size, as I live,
six feet by five, — my Reverence carrying with me
the only chair in the house, while John, the hus
band sat on the bed, while the tea-pot and oat-cake
smoked at the little table, and Margaret, having in
fact nothing to sit upon, stood and served. That
grandeur of one chair, borrowed tea, and a barefoot
life by a peat-fire was what this Mary Quinn was
born to. Yes, and for my notion, I think it was
better for her and her brothers and sisters than the
tenement life, upper story, three flights, in Back-
street-court-place, where the children feasted and
slept in the corners left by Mrs. Johnson's and
Selina's spotless drapery. But to be ushered out
by this same Mary, not into the five-foot-six bed
room, to feast from a groaning taper-stand, but
into the comely sitting-room, — with its six painted
chairs, its sofa and ornamented centre-table (shade
of Saint Patrick), its portraits of Dan O'Connell,

How They Lived at Naguadavick i 29

Theobald Mathew, George Washington on his
death-bed, and framed testimony of membership
of the Siloam Division ; to see the cheer and joy
with which that woman remembered that she was
not living either in a pig-sty or in a barrack, and
the sweet saintliness with which she thanked God
that she was not ; — to see this, and to know this,
and to remember this, was to make Rosedale glow
indeed with the true roseate hue. I should not
have selected the pictures, or furniture, but she
had. They were her taste, if not mine, and there
was the glory. " Excuse me for a moment," said
the matron ; " Honora will be downstairs presently,"
and retired, intent on hospitable cares. I had
enough to think of to make it unnecessary for
me to read the last " Harper," or Mr. Hoadley's
" Genghis Khan and his Coadjutors." I only had
the " Harper " in my hand that I might not seem
neglected when my pretty little Honora came in.
And that was really the same child whom I had
seen faded and dead in the alley-ways of the town !
She remembered the things she said then, and had
the book Polly gave her then for a Christmas
present. The same child? What one thing in
her was the same? This nut-brown face against
that limy-white skin, these hard round arms against
those skinny fagots of muscle and tendon, this
modest, simple look against that eager, inquiring,
dissatisfied, anxious glare ! And when I talked
with her (the child knew me as well as she
knew her father), — when I talked with her, here

9

130 Sybaris and Other Homes

were undertakings, and friends, books, walks, col
lections of butterflies, a party to Mount Green
back, a picnic at Paradise, — all this against the
stupid town life of such a child, who has gone to
school and come back if she is good, and gone
again and come back again; but to whom one
day has been as another, because her mother can
not trust her much in the streets, and there is for
her no possibility of society in its forms of simple,
light-hearted pleasure ! Dear reader, if you care
to go into Back-street-court-place in Boston or in
New York, you may find as many hundred
Honoras as you choose, who never saw the sea on
the beach, never picked shell from sand, never
planted seed in ground, never watched bird's nest
on tree, never crunched moss with foot, never
sailed chip on stream, never hunted butterfly over
grass, never rested under shady tree, never waded
across mountain-brook, never picked berry from
bough, never ate peach or pear, never rode on
horse or ass, never sat in wagon or sleigh, never
enjoyed one of the little pleasures which are as
the daily food of your children, which they think
of so little that they are begging you to-day for
something more, because these are things of
course to everybody.

So, you see, Honora was herself the heroine of
a romance to me. There is the reason why I read
so few novels, dear boy; it is because I see so
many. And here comes in the great shy Frederic,
— my Riverince's godson, — who has endued him-

How They Lived at Naguadavick 1 3 1

self rapidly in his Sunday jacket because of my
staying to tea, and who is shy and ill at ease both
because I am there and because he has on the
jacket. But I administer a story of the good
fortune of Dick McKelvy, who has gone to Mexico
with the army, and I show Fred a burning-glass of
a pattern he has never seen, and he becomes com
municative. Can it be possible ! This godson,
who was erst a little wild, you must know, — who
really, if you will not mention it, got into the
lock-up one day because he threw marbles at an
auctioneer, and, which was ten thousand times
worse, at the common law, slapped the policeman
who tried to stop him, — this godson, for whom I
then and there had to go bail that he should keep
the peace of the State, else he would have been
sent to the house of correction, — this wild godson
of mine is the most sedate, if the most enterprising,
of human beings. He has formed alliance, offen
sive and defensive, with Hod Bates (Hod is short
for Horace). "You know Hod Bates?" My
Reverence had not that pleasure. " Well, Hod is
a first-rate fellow, and his father owns a saw-mill
up at Number Nine and two townships in the
Seventh, and Hod is going up with the men next
winter to take care of one of the camps, and he
has asked his father to let me go up and take care
of the other ; and if he likes and I like, I am to
have a chance at the mill when it begins running
in April, — the fellow that is there now is going to
Illinois," &c., &c., &c. Fred is on a larger stage

132 Sybaris and Other Homes

now, and the accumulated steam which erst fired
marbles, as from a Perkins gun, on my excellent
friend Cunningham with his hammer, is now to
drive the mill which is to cut the plank, which is
to lay the floor of the court-house, in which you,
my dear Frisbie, are to lay down the law which is
to save from ruin these States in all coming time !
This is the house that Fred built !

A slight commotion, and it is announced that
Mike's train passes the window. Ten minutes
more (for the horse-cars are not Metropolitan, let
us be thankful), and Mike's step is heard at the
side door. Two minutes for a second wash, for
brushing the hair even with Methodistical pre
cision, and for a Sunday coat, and Mike emerges
into the sitting-room. His ride out of town has
been his visit to his club-room ; he has picked up
all the gossip of Naguadavick and of Rosedale.
He tells me more news than I have heard in a
week, and does the honors with infinite volubility.
Thirty seconds more, and Mary's tea-bell rings.
That Mary Quinn should need a tea-bell ! that the
little hawks are not sitting on their perches waiting
to descend on the visible meal ! And we go in
to sit, not on the bed of her bedroom, but in the
neat kitchen, at her pretty table, where everything,
dear Amphitryon, is served a great deal hotter
from the stove than you will ever have it in
your palace, for all your patent contrived double
dishes and covers, and for all your very noisy
dumb-waiters.

How They Lived at Naguadavick 133

On that hospitable meal let the curtain fall. It
was the eaters, not the eaten, that had the fascina
tion for me. As it happened, it was only the day
before that I had walked through A Street in
South Boston. It was vacation, and the wretched
Irish children were sitting on their haunches as
Baker describes the Abyssinians, looking across the
street at nothing with their poor lack-lustre eyes.
What should they do? Mr. Nash had given them
baths. But they could not swim all day ! The
city had given schools, but they could not go to
school all the year ! Poor wretches, — afternoon
had come, and supper-time had not come, — what
room was there in those heated tenements, — what
play for them outdoors? And these miserable,
pseudo-Abyssinian children were of the same blood
as Phelim and Honora and Owen. Nay, maybe
they were their cousins. Maybe ; and what is
certain, dear reader, is that they were your
brothers and sisters, and were mine !

So I drank Mary's tea from her wonderful new
service of " chaney." I ate, in the right order, of
bread, toast, gingerbread, pie, and tea-cake; I
praised the children's berries and had a quart put
up for Polly and the children ; I kissed the little
ones good-bye, I shook hands with the eldest, cried
" All right ! " to Phelim as he stopped the horse-
car, entered it, crossed to the steam station, and in
thirty-seven minutes and nineteen seconds, from
house to house, I was at home in Polly's arms.

They did not sell season tickets on the Great

134 Sybaris and Other Homes

Northern ; they sold package tickets, and for his
six hundred and twenty-four passages yearly Mike
had to pay sixty-two dollars and forty cents. His
interest money on his house was forty-six dollars
and fifty cents. These two amounts made one
hundred and eight dollars and ninety cents a year
against the three dollars a week which Mike used
to pay for two nasty and deadly rooms over the
open drain in Back-street-court-place. He had,
thrown in beside, the steady improvement in his
property, his children's health, the value of their
work, as it appeared in the garden and the results
of the garden, and, above all, the feeling that no
man was his master, that he was independent, was
subduing the world, and in short was one of the
governing classes. Mike was not the only work
man in Naguadavick who saw the advantage of
that line of life.

" This is certainly better," I said to myself, as I
rode into town, " than having to crowd Mike and
Mary and their friends as we did five years ago.
All our ministry at large, and all our home mis
sions, and all our provident associations, and all
our relief organizations, and all our soup kitchens,
were but a poor apology for such a success as this.
We are getting back here on the true American
principle, ' where every rood of ground maintains
its man,' woman, and child, — nay, is it not the
principle of the prophet : ' Every man shall sit
under his own vine and fig-tree'?"

" We must have land enough too," I said. " In

How They Lived at Naguadavick 135

a circle of fifteen miles' radius around Naguada
vick there are about four hundred and fifty thou
sand acres. So many acre homesteads, supposing
an acre were the average. That gives homes for
two million persons, and Naguadavick will not
need two million inhabitants, while there are only
one million people in the whole State."

And so I returned home.

To live thus, near Boston, and to let our labor
ing men live thus, we need to provide for the
laboring men as carefully as we have already
provided for the men who live on salaries. For
this, we need express trains from points so distant
that land is yet cheap. And we need unswerving
regularity in the administration of these trains.
These requisites granted, such an arrangement be
comes a blessing to Boston, to the neighborhood,
to the laborer, and to the railroad or common
carrier, who intervenes among them all.

HOW THEY LIVE IN VINELAND

VINELAND is a village of about three thou
sand inhabitants, closely surrounded by
farms, where there reside nine thousand more,
thirty-five miles from Philadelphia, on the way to
Cape May.^

Eight years ago no person lived in the village
thus occupied at the present time (1869) and
hardly six families on the lands now used for farms.

No extensive manufacture has called these peo
ple together. There has been no discovery of
mines, mineral spring, or other marvel. The rail
road gives them no new facility, or any which is
not shared by a dozen other places. Nor is the
soil any better than in a hundred others.

Vineland has become what it is, a busy, thriving
place of twelve thousand people, by the steady de
velopment of two or three simple principles, which
might be tried anywhere, if there were a scale
sufficiently large for the experiment.

I contribute to this book, therefore, a brief study
of these principles as they have been illustrated by
the growth of Vineland. For I believe that in the

How They Live in Vineland 137

application of such principles to the settlement of
small towns as cities of refuge near our large cities
is the salvation of our large cities to be found. I
believe these principles are of general application,
and that the success of Vineland need be by no
means exceptional. They are substantially the
same principles which, in the sketch here at
tempted of the life of the people of Naguadavick,
are relied upon for the success of the colonies
which they established in their railroad villages.
As I am well aware, however, that the possibility
of founding such villages on these principles will
be doubted, I am glad to sustain it by a sketch of
the origin and success ^f Vineland. I ask any
person who is incredulous to go and visit that
town.

First, and chiefly, Vineland relies — as the im
agined towns of Rosedale and Aboo Goosh rely
— on what I may call the natural passion for
holding LAND, and the beneficial effects of FREE
HOLD on the Freeholder. We have forgotten
these effects in America, simply because land was
to be got for the asking in our fathers' days, and
is to be got for the asking now in many regions.
Therefore, in a social condition formed by men
who were almost all freeholders, we neglect the
advantages of FREEHOLD as we do those of air,
water, light, and the salt sea. But, as we pile
people together in cities, — as we separate them
from their mother earth, — as we make them ten
ants of one and another landlord, we do our best

138 Sybaris and Other Homes

to unmake the virtues of two centuries' growth,
which sprang from the holding of one's own home
in fee-simple. The freeholders of New England,
in 1775, were a different race of beings from the
privates in the English regiments under the com
mand of General Gage whom they met in battle.
The institutions which they made, when they
established, in 1780, the Constitution of Massa
chusetts, — and when they established afterward
the other constitutions which on that were pat
terned, — were all well based on a supposed state
of society, where almost every man owned his
home, had a stake in the country, as the English
say, and had that steadfast desire to improve the
town in which he lived, in all of its institutions,
which to such real estate belongs. Real estate,
indeed ! It is the only estate which gives man
firm foothold. It represents the only wealth which
does not easily take wings and fly away !

So long as the American systems are tested in
States where most men still have freehold, as in
the State of Vermont, for instance, they work as
regularly and as precisely as they ever did. Let
me copy literally the opinion of one whose opin
ion in such a matter is worth much more than
mine. I take it from a note on my table addressed
to me, which I copy literally, only omitting the
name of the town in Illinois where it is written.
It is from a boy now seventeen years old, who in
Massachusetts knew the inside of at least one jail,
and was always in hot water.

How They Live in Vineland 139

JULY 27, 1869.

Mr. Hale Dear Sir i Write these few lines to let you
know that i am Well and hope you and your family are
the same i have been west onwards two years i have
been living on a farm since i came out here i have
clothed myself and laid up my money i have been geting
$250 a year i have thought of buying a farm and takeing
my mother out here if i thought she would come i like
this state very well the reason is that a poor man can get
a home in a little while if he uses his means proper more
so than in the east i wich you would give me some infor
mation where my mother is and tell her to write to me as
soon as possible as i am anxious about her if you think i
am worth noticeing i wich you would write to me as soon
as you get this letter and give me some advice on this
matter and tell me what you think i had ought to do.

Now that letter is a little deficient in commas,
but the spelling speaks sufficiently well for the
two or three winters' schools to which this boy
was sent in a mountain town in Massachusetts.
And I would give more for the letter as an exposi
tion of the real worth of Illinois than I would for
fifty " hifalutin " articles in the Chicago or the
Springfield newspapers. That Irish boy of seven
teen has found the root of this matter. He can
get a home in Illinois, though he is poor, and he
can send for the half-cracked mother, who spent
the best of her life, after her husband deserted
them both, in taking care of him.

Land, — or Freehold, — in short, is really a
prime necessity. It is necessary that almost every

140 Sybaris and Other Homes

man should have a fair chance at Land, — held in
his own right, — if you mean to govern America
by its original institutions.

Now, if a man means to be a farmer, there is no
trouble about his getting this land. Between Lord
Ashburton's line on the northeast and Cape Flor
ida on the south, and Nootka Sound and the rest
of the Pacific Ocean on the west, there is plenty
of land — and the best of land, if a man wants
literally to subdue the earth — to raise the food
from it for his own household, and to sell to the
more civilized lands the surplus he has left. Ac
cording to the free-traders this is what we all
ought to be doing. We ought to stop this singing
of songs, wearing of clothes, printing of books,
carving of statues, digging in mines, and ought
to devote ourselves to the " providential duty " of
America in raising breadstuff's and cotton for the
rest of the world. But even Adam Smith made
books, instead of working at a loom in Glasgow,
as by his own theory he should have done. And
the good sense of the people of America prefers
God's order to the order of the Economists. It
prefers to develop each human gift, as it appears,
and so to vary human industry that, on our own
soil, there shall be fair chance for each class of
human power. If Jonathan Edwards happens to
be born here, we give him a chance as a meta
physician, though by the theory he should be rais
ing Indian corn. If Allston is born here, we give
him a chance as a painter, though he should be

How They Live in Vineland 141

raising indigo. We once let Eli Whitney try his
hand as an inventor, though he should have been
laying stone wall in Worcester County, by the
theory. By our latitude in that one case we created
the cotton crop of America. We let Fulton build
steamboats, and Norris and Ross and Winans build
locomotives, and De Witt Clinton build canals,
and Nathan Hale build railroads, though by the
theory all of them should be hoeing, or at the
best grinding. And so, after two or three cen
turies of varied industry, we have a civilization of
the highest grade, — wholly different from the low
agricultural civilization of Southern Russia, of
Poland, and of Ireland. We have millions of
people gathering in and near large towns for
purposes of commerce and manufacture ; and
yet we have and we love institutions which are
based essentially on the idea that the very great
majority of the people of the State shall be free
holders, and shall be controlled, in their motives
and in their action, by those considerations which
to the possession of Land infallibly belong.

Nobody but Mrs. Partington expects to sweep
back these thronging millions from the towns to
the prairies by nice little half-column articles in
the daily papers, on the joys of Agricultural Life.
If the men who write these idyls like the prairies,
why do not they go to them themselves? That is
the fierce question which young men from the
country and young girls from the country ask, —
men and girls who have forced their way to the

142 Sybaris and Other Homes

large towns and their excitements and occupations,
precisely because their own tastes or aptitudes lay
in the direction of commerce or of handiwork or
of fine art, and precisely because they did not
choose to continue in the duties which the life of a
farmer compelled. We cannot undo the eternal
laws of our civilization. We cannot keep our bread
and eat it too. We cannot have large cities, with
the stimulus they give in civilization, and at the
same time send all our young people to fence in
prairies, and raise breadstuffs. The plaintive ap
peals addressed by those who have got their seats
for the spectacle to those who are crowding on the
outside — that they will all be pleased to go away
— are scarcely heard. When they are heard it is
by those who are quite incredulous, though they are
told that there is not even standing room within.

I. FREEHOLD is taken for granted in the theory
of American institutions.

II. COMPACT CITIES are necessary for modern
civilization.

How are these two necessities to be reconciled ?

Where the cities are not large the tendency and
habit of American institutions asserts itself, and
the workmen in the shops of cities are at the same
time freeholders in the immediate neighborhood of
their work. In the city of Worcester, in Massa
chusetts, there are about thirty-five thousand per
sons at the present time, of whom I suppose
nine tenths are engaged in manufacture. As in all

How They Live in Vineland 143

manufacturing towns, the proportion of persons
not living in families is large. There were in May,
1868, 9137 men over eighteen years of age. I sup
pose five thousand of these may have been heads
of families. To live in, these families had 3,849
houses, the average number of inhabitants to a
house being as low as eight and nine tenths, —
singularly low for a manufacturing town. The
number of resident persons, firms, and corporations
which pay taxes on real estate was as high as
2,924. It would probably be safe to say that in
that manufacturing town one half the voters are
freeholders, own their own houses and reside in
them, having obtained freehold in the neighbor
hood of their work. A circle of four miles diam
eter, of which each point would be within two miles
of the city hall, would give twenty-four thousand
lots of a quarter-acre each, allowing a quarter of
the space for roads and parks. On the usual com
putation of seven persons to a family, a city whose
workshops occupied a square mile might give a
freehold of a quarter-acre to one hundred and
thirty thousand people, all within a mile and a half
of the workshop square ; and yet no person should
live in a house with more than seven inhabitants.

The advantage which newly formed towns like
Worcester have in such regards is very great. In
old towns like Boston it is very difficult for the
laboring man to get freehold near his work; he
becomes a tenant, and the tenement-house system
comes in, with all its disadvantages.

144 Sybaris and Other Homes

But at this point the invention of railroads re
lieves, or may relieve, the crowd upon the towns.

Any village within fifteen miles of a commercial
or manufacturing town is within half an hour of it
by express train. Now half an hour between home
and work meets the requisition of a laboring man.

A circle of fifteen miles' radius includes rather

more than 433-58o acres

Give a quarter of this, or 108.395 "

to roads and parks, and you have left . . 325.185 acres
for workshops and homes.

Give eight thousand acres to shops and ware
houses, — that is, a block three miles by four miles
in the middle of the circle, — and you have left
three hundred and seventeen thousand acres. This,
if you chose to divide it so, would be a freehold
acre-lot for so many families; for a population,
that is to say, of two millions and a quarter, none
of whom should live in the "business part of the
town," none of them in a house of more than seven
inhabitants, and each of them with a garden of an
acre.

This is the theoretical combination of the advan
tages of freehold and the advantages of compact
cities.

But, as every reader knows, the practice does
not approach this theory.

I. In cases of seaboard cities a large deduction
must be made for that part of the circle which is
covered by water.

How They Live in Vineland 145

2. The railroad companies in general are com
passing sea and land to get another barrel of flour
or another passenger from a thousand miles away,
unconscious that they can make their richer mar
ket at their doors. One passenger from New
York is shot into Boston with the highest speed
science can give, for a thousand who are left to
linger along in the doldrums of local trains. But
the time of the distant traveller is not a whit more
important than that of the neighbor.

3. The landholder thinks his duty done when he
cuts his land into small lots and offers it for sale.
The truth is that land of itself is the most worthless
of commodities. To induce the laborer from the
city to buy the land, many intermediate steps must
be taken. Of many of these steps we have val
uable suggestion in the experience of VlNELAND.

It is perfectly true that in the neighborhood of
all large cities may be seen tracts with the lines of
paper roads dimly shadowed on them, with one or
two cottages orne"es tumbling to ruin, which are
held up as the illustrations of the failure of efforts
to induce laboring men to live in the country. In
truth, they are only illustrations of the folly which
supposes that, in a country of intelligent men, any
man can sell by the foot at high prices what he
bought by the acre at low, without doing anything
himself to improve the condition of the property.

I. People will not establish themselves in any
village of small holdings, unless it is large enough,
or promises to be large enough, to give them

10

146 Sybaris and Other Homes

society, and, with society, the amusements, the in
struction, and mutual advantages of other kinds
which society affords. The town must be large
enough for two or three churches at least, for good
schools, for public entertainments of different
grades, and for the vivacity which belongs to city
life, or the laboring men will stay in the city. This
requires an enterprise involving at least one thou
sand families. Six hundred acres of land, at the
very least, are needed to offer to each settler the
attractions which are indispensable. One or two
thousand would be better.

In the establishment of VlNELAND, Mr. Landis,
the founder, was not looking to draw men out from
cities. I suppose he would be quite as willing that
men used to city life should not come. He was
trying to build up a community of small farmers.
But even he saw the necessity of compact village
life. The centre of Vineland is a village of six
hundred acres, crossed by eight streets, running
one way, and in the middle of all, by the broad
avenue of which the railroad is the middle ; and
across the other way by nine streets, with Landis
Avenue. The village lots were originally fifty feet
wide. Mr. Landis gave land for the erection of
churches ; and, as he could, encouraged horticul
tural, scientific, and other societies, which aimed at
entertainment and mutual improvement. Outside
of this village, Mr. Landis laid off farm lots, from
five to twenty acres and upwards, which now cover
a tract of more than forty thousand acres.

How They Live in Vineland 147

I am confident that the success of Vineland is
due, first, to the very magnitude of the scale on
which it is planned. Most of us would be will
ing to live in a community of ten thousand people.
But it is only exceptional persons who really pre
fer the solitude of a hamlet of twenty or thirty.

2. The new-fledged freeholder, who has bought
himself a half-acre lot in some Mount Vernon or
Mount Bellingham speculation near a large city, is
apt to find that all the hardships of land-owning
come upon him long before the advantages can
develop. The day of the auction sale he was quite
a hero. He had a free ticket to ride to the spot.
He had champagne, crackers, and cheese without
charge. He was, that day, the companion and
friend of all the directors. The new roads were in
perfect order. The trains came and went exactly
as the exigencies of the sale required. But before
he has owned his land a month he has learned
that the fence to it will cost him more than the
land cost him. The road has washed badly in a
shower, and he cannot find anybody whose busi
ness it is to repair it. No grocer is yet established
in the neighborhood. And the railroad no longer
runs a train in and out when it is wanted. He
does not know any of the other new land-owners.
He finds that the directors of the land company no
longer know him ; and that they are naturally quite
indifferent to his difficulties. The only new ac
quaintance he makes is the tax collector, who
begins assessing his real estate at the auction

148 Sybaris and Other Homes

price. And when he talks with a mason about
building, he is told they must begin by digging a
well on each of these little lots, for which he begins
to think they have all paid very high.

In Vineland Mr. Landis met most of these diffi
culties in advance, by methods which, as I believe,
must be imitated by any one who wishes for suc
cess. He went and lived in his own town, and
made the establishment of the town his business.
There was at least somebody on hand who wanted
to have the establishment succeed. By a master
stroke of policy, fortunately easily imitated under
the law of Massachusetts, he took away all neces
sity for fencing, by keeping all cattle closely
confined. On the other hand, he bound each
purchaser to make certain improvements within
twelve months ; so that there cannot be in Vine-
land many of the odious empty corner lots, waiting
to become valuable, which disgrace most new
towns. Among the improvements required of each
purchaser was the seeding with grass of the sides
of the highway, the planting of shade-trees along
the streets and avenues, and a fixed line was given,
before which the fronts of the houses must not be
carried. By these arrangements alone many of
the drawbacks which sicken a new freeholder of
his bargain are effectually removed.

If you go to Vineland, you find near the station
a decent-looking hotel, which, when I saw it, made
no pretence, but seemed comfortable enough, —
which is, clearly enough, in the interest of the pro-

How They Live in Vineland 149

prietor. You enter your name on the book, and
before long a man accosts you, who asks if you
wish to see the place. If you say you do, he says
it is his business to show it to you, and that if you
like to take his guidance, he will be ready with a
carriage when you say, — without charge to you.
Meanwhile you can look at the plans, where you
will find the prices of unimproved property marked.
He will own that he shall try to make you see the
place to advantage, that he has a commission on
each sale he makes ; but you are of course at lib
erty to go with or without his guidance. Probably
you take his guidance. He drives you up and
down well-built avenues and roads, shows you vil
lage lots, farm lots, the general plan of the settle
ment, and answers your questions as well as he
can.

You finally think you should like such or such
a place which you have seen, and say you will go
home and ask your wife. " As you please," says
the agent, " but if you buy at first hand you must
take your chances. If another purchaser appears
to-morrow, why, we shall sell to him." If you
agree to purchase to-day, favorable terms are given
as to times of payment, which extend over four
years; but invariably the conditions which have
been alluded to are exacted. No person buys
unless he expects to become himself a settler. It
is evident, from all conversation with the people
of the place, that they have taught themselves to
regard any land speculator who comes between

150 Sybaris and Other Homes

the original holder and the inhabitant of the land
as an unendurable nuisance. But they do not re
gard Mr. Landis so, I think. Their purchases
have made him rich, and they know it. But he
has identified himself with the success of the place.
He has kept up the highways at his own charge.
The business of the town is raising fruit. Mr.
Landis appoints an agent who carries all fruit for
the settlers to Philadelphia or New York, sells it,
and remits the full proceeds to the producer, with
out any charge on them. This is, of course, in
theory, false political economy. But see at how
low a charge it encourages the beginnings of the
industry on which the town is to rest. Under a
similar policy he has borne the principal part of
the expense of draining three hundred acres of
swamp, from which muck can be drawn for manure,
and has given to each settler the privilege of draw
ing for his own use as much as he needed. During
the winter of 1866-67 fifty thousand wagon-loads
of this muck were removed thus by the settlers
from the lands of the proprietor for manure for
their own farms and gardens. I was told that the
settlers went with confidence to Mr. Landis as a
friend who would pull industrious men out of diffi
culties. I see that he is an officer in almost every
one of the innumerable societies.

In the year 1866 the Agricultural Society paid an ag
gregate amount in premiums of two hundred and twelve
dollars, while the Floral Society distributed in premiums
twenty-three dollars.

How They Live in Vineland 1 5 1

In the same year (1866) Mr. Landis distributed the
following list of premiums : —

One hundred dollars to be divided in two sums, for the
best essay upon the history of the place ; to be deter
mined under the supervision of the Historical Society.

One hundred dollars, to be divided in two sums, for
the best essay in Prose, and the best in Poetry.

One hundred dollars to the Agricultural and Horticul
tural Society, to be distributed as premiums for the best
specimens in Produce.

One hundred dollars to the Agricultural and Horticul
tural Society, to be distributed as premiums for the best
specimen of Fruit.

One hundred dollars, to be divided into two prize gold
medals with proper inscriptions, to the two male and fe
male scholars who shall each be pronounced the most
proficient scholar, independent of any other consideration.

One hundred dollars to the two male and female schol
ars over fourteen years of age, and not over eighteen
years of age, who shall each be pronounced the most pro
ficient scholar, independent of any other consideration.

One hundred dollars to the Band of Music, for which
they are to give six public concerts, — three in the open
air in summer, and three in winter.

One hundred dollars, in two gold medals, with proper
inscriptions, to the persons most graceful in and proficient
in gymnastics.

Fifty dollars, in a gold medal, to the lady who culti
vated the best flower-garden with her own hands.

In addition to the premiums offered by the Agri
cultural Society in 1867, Mr. Landis offered the
following : —

152 Sybaris and Other Homes

Twenty dollars and certificate for the best acre of
broom-corn.

Twenty dollars and certificate for the best acre of field
carrots. i

Twenty dollars and certificate for the best acre of field
turnips.

Twenty dollars for the best-kept farm.

Twenty dollars for the best-kept orchard, not less than
two acres.

Fifty dollars to the lady who cultivates the best flower-
garden with her own hands.

One hundred dollars, to be divided between the two
male and female scholars, not over eighteen years of age,
who shall be pronounced the most proficient scholars.

One hundred dollars, to be divided between the three
persons who are the best players on the violin, cornet or
bugle, and flute ; to be played at the Fair, and decided
by the committee.

Fifty dollars to the lady most proficient in gymnastics.

Fifty dollars to the gentleman most proficient in heavy
gymnastics.

I may say, in brief, as a summary of this part of
my observations on Vineland, that it is the only
new place I ever visited where I have found the
greater part of the women satisfied. Pioneer life
— the establishing of new communities — comes
very hard upon the women. The men have the
excitement ; the women generally have hard work
at home without excitement. The men find their
society as they do their daily work. The women
generally are left alone to theirs. But in Vineland,
even when it was but four years old, I found in-

How They Live in Vineland 153

tense activity everywhere, and I spoke to no
woman who was not well satisfied with the social
experiment which was undertaken there.

3. It will not unfrequently happen that the pur
chaser fails to make the improvement to which he
is pledged, and that the land therefore recurs to
Mr. Landis. In this case, when he offers the land
again for sale, he changes the price from what it
was, as the circumstances may justify. But in
general the price of unimproved land remains un
changed, Mr. Landis relying for his profits on the
continual improvements of the settlement, which of
course quickens sales, as the population enlarges.
What reason he has for such reliance may be
judged from the following record of progress.

In 1 86 1 one shanty was built on the new village
lot.

In 1862 twenty-five houses were built, a store,
and a schoolhouse.

In 1863 one hundred and fifteen houses were
built, and at the end of the year three hundred and
sixty-nine purchases of land had been made.

At the end of 1864 six hundred and seventy
farms had been sold; and on the 1st of January,
1865, nearly two thousand persons attended Mr.
Landis's annual reception. As a token of regard
they presented to him " Appleton's Cyclopaedia."

In 1865 about two hundred buildings were
erected, and at the end Mr. Landis had sold
about fourteen hundred properties. Nearly one
thousand contracts to build were made in this year.

154 Sybaris and Other Homes

At the end of 1867 nearly two thousand farms
had been sold.

The following table, recently published, shows
what various institutions had come into being in
this period. Many of these are doubtless larger
on paper than anywhere else, still they represent
something.

I. MANUFACTURING INTERESTS.

1. American Building Block Factory.

2. Twelve Stone Quarries.

3. Three Brick Yards.

4. Six Steam Mills, Planing Mills, and three Lumber
Yards.

5. Door, Blind, and Sash Factories.

6. Carriage Factories.

7. Saw and Plane Handle Manufactory.

8. Wood-turning and Scroll-sawing Manufactory.

9. Shoe Factory.

10. Pottery and Stone- Ware Manufactory.
u. Straw-sewing Business.

12. Crates and Fruit-Boxes Business.

13. Bookbinding and Paper-Box and Fancy Varieties
Business.

14. Clothing Business.

15. Hoop- Skirt Manufacturing.

1 6. Button Business.

II. AGRICULTURAL AND KINDRED SOCIETIES.

1. Vineland Agricultural and Horticultural Associ
ation.

2. Ladies' Floral Society.

How They Live in Vineland 155

[Strawberry Festivals and annual Fair and Exhibition
under the auspices of the above.]

3. Pomological Association.

4. Fruit-Growers' Association.
4. Co-operative Association.

6. Landis Avenue Improvement Association.

7. East Vineland Agricultural and Pomological
Society.

8. South Vineland Fruit- Growers' Club.

9. Lincoln Mutual Benefit Farmers' Club.

10. North Vineland Agricultural and Horticultural
Society.

11. Forest Grove Agricultural Society.

III. 'CHANGE AND BUSINESS FACILITIES.

1. Private Bank.

2. Safe Deposit Company.

3. Mercantile Association.

4. Vineland Loan and Improvement Association.

5. Three Post- Offices, one of which does a far larger
business than any other in West Jersey.

IV. TEMPERANCE AND PHYSICAL REFORM.
f Intoxicating Liquors Voted out of Vineland, July
10, 1863.
§ Township law to that effect.

1. Independent Order of Good Templars.

a. Alpha Temple.

b. Liberty, Excelsior, Rising Sun, and Koh-i-noor

Lodges.

2. Health Association.

3. Phil- Athletic Club.

4. Base Club.

156 Sybaris and Other Homes

V. EDUCATIONAL PRIVILEGES.

1. Sixteen District Schools, at convenient distances
from all parts of the Tract.

2. Four private Schools.

3. Classical Institute.

4. Young Ladies' and Gentlemen's Academy.

5. Methodist Conference Seminary, now building, 142
feet long, 56 feet wide at the ends, and 44 feet in the
centre. Height from ground to top of cornice, 50 feet.
Lofty French roof, spacious cupola, porticoes, piazzas,
balconies, &c. Style, — Large Italian (whatever that
may be).

6. SOCIETIES OF ART AND LEARNING.

a. Vineland Historical and Antiquarian Society.

b. Pioneers' Association.

c. Literary Association.

d. The People's Lyceum.

e. Hamilton Mutual Benefit Society.

f. Vineland Library Association.

g. Harmonic Society, Glee Clubs, and Cornet and

other bands, &c.

h. Dramatic Association.

/. Social Science Association.

j. Lectures, exhibitions, festivals, and other varied
intellectual entertainments, periodical and ex
traordinary.

VI. BENEVOLENT SOCIETIES, &c.

1. A. F. of A. M. : — Masonic Hall.

2. I. O. of O. F.

3. Philanthropic Loan Association.

How They Live in Vineland 157

VII. PUBLIC HALLS, PARKS, SQUARES, &c.

1. Plum Street Hall.

2. Mechanics' Hall.

3. Union Hall.

4. The Park, covering forty-eight acres.

5. Thirteen Public Squares.

6. Siloam Cemetery, covering fourteen acres, beauti
fully laid out.

7. Public Adornments.

VIII. RELIGIOUS SOCIETIES.

1. Episcopalian. — Trinity Church (Gothic), on Elmer
Street.

2. Presbyterian. — Church (Light Italian), on Landis
Avenue.

3. Methodist. — Church (Romanesque), on Landis
Avenue.

4. Baptist. — Reed's Hall. Large Church (Byzantine
Romanesque), now being erected on Landis Avenue.

5. Free-Will Baptists.

6. Sabbatarian.

7. Baptist Congregational. — Church (Italesque), in
South Vineland.

8. Union. — Church (Italesque), in South Vineland.

9. Adventist.

10. Unitarian. — Church (Plain Gothic), on Sixth and
Elmer streets.

11. Friends of Progress. — Plum Street Hall.

12. Catholic. — Church soon to be erected.

13. Young People's Union Christian Association.

158 Sybaris and Other Homes

IX. MISCELLANEOUS.

1. Journalistic.

a. Two weekly newspapers: "Vineland Weekly"

and "Vineland Independent."

b. One bi-weekly: " Vineland Democrat."

c. Two monthly : " Vineland Rural " and " Farmers'

Friend."

2. Political.

a. Union League.

b. Grand Army of the Republic.

c. Two Campaign Clubs.

The steadiness of the price of unimproved lots
is an inducement to every resident to persuade his
friends and relatives to come and assist in the enter
prise. Almost all settlers, in this way, begin to
feel a pecuniary interest in the success of the
whole. If a settler and his wife are pleased, — if
they see the rapid advance of the value of land,
given by some improvement, — they become them
selves the best advertising agents; they write to
relatives or friends to show to them the advantages
of an investment here, and thus add to the growth
of the establishment. They cannot invest in un
improved lands themselves without making the
required improvements. But they can invite their
friends to come and make them, and it is evident,
from the rapid growth of the place, that this is
what they have done.

That Mr. Landis is himself kindly regarded by
the people who have come together in the town

How They Live in Vineland 159

which he has founded seems evident from the
direction which a thousand straws take, blown by
the wind of its popular opinion.

4. Early in the settlement of Vineland the people
of the town, led undoubtedly by Mr. Landis, deter
mined, with great unanimity, that they would not
have the sale of intoxicating liquor, or what they
call " saloons," and we call " bar-rooms." They
sent out of town the first dealer who sold beer to
the boys and wood-choppers, and called a meeting
which passed resolutions and formed an organi
zation to prevent the sale of intoxicating liquors.
This was July 10, 1863.

They then, by a very curious arrangement, peti
tioned the Legislature of New Jersey to pass a
special law precluding the sale of any intoxicating
liquor, beer, or wine, within the limit of Landis
township. The Legislature did this by a vote of
sixty-three to four, on the ground, probably, that
the people asked for it, as the State of New Jersey
has no such general policy. Each offence against
this law is punishable by a fine of fifty dollars
or by imprisonment or both.

Of course this peculiarity keeps from Vineland
all settlers who wish to have the privilege of buying
and drinking liquors in public. There is no re
striction on a man's buying liquors elsewhere and
bringing them to his house to use. But he must
not sell them in Vineland. Mr. Landis, and the
great majority of the people there, are very willing
to give up any settlers whom they thus lose.

160 Sybaris and Other Homes

There is, indeed, in most new enterprises of land-
settlement, no lack of openings for them. The
result of the policy is shown succinctly in the
following report from the Town Constable and
Overseer of the Poor, published in the spring
of 1869.

As Constable and Overseer of the Poor there are some
things in my department which show so conclusively the
favorable working of the system upon which Vineland is
founded, that I will give the information to the public, so
that the facts may be known and the example of this
system followed.

The two principles in Vineland which we recognize as
uppermost are: First, That land shall not be sold to
speculators ; second, By the decision of the people that
there shall be no grog-shops, liquor saloons, licensed
taverns, or lager-beer shops.

What is the practical working of these principles ? I
will state a few facts which are probably unexampled in
the United States, at least. Though we have a popu
lation of ten thousand people, for the period of six months
no settler or citizen of Vineland has required relief at my
hands as Overseer of the Poor. Within seventy days
there has been only one case, among what we call the
floating population, at the expense of four dollars.

During the entire year there has been only one indict
ment, and that a trifling case of assault and battery among
our colored population.

So few are the fires in Vineland that we have no need
of a fire department. There has only been one house
burnt down in a year, and two slight fires, which were
soon put out.

How They Live in Vineland 161

We practically have no debt, and our taxes are only one
per cent on the valuation.

The police expenses of Vineland amount to seventy-
five dollars per year, the sum paid to me, and our poor
expenses are a mere trifle.

I ascribe this remarkable state of things, so nearly ap
proaching the Golden Age, to the industry of our people
and the absence of King Alcohol.

Let me give you, in contrast to this, the state of things
in the town from which I came, in New England. The
population of the town was 9,500, a little less than Vine-
land. It maintained forty liquor-shops. These kept
busy a police judge, city marshal, assistant marshal, four
night watchmen, six policemen. Fires were almost con
tinual. That small place maintained a paid fire depart
ment of four companies, of forty men each, at an expense
of three thousand dollars per annum. I belonged to this
department for six years, and the fires averaged about one
every two weeks, and mostly incendiary. The support of
the poor cost two thousand five hundred dollars per
annum. The debt of the township was one hundred and
twenty thousand dollars. The condition of things in this
New England town is as favorable in that country as many
other places where liquor is sold.

T. T. CORTIS,

Constable and Overseer of Poor of Landis Township.

5. The aim of Mr. Landis, from the beginning,
has been to build up a community of which the
central business should be small farming. He has
no such aims as had the founders of the villages
described in this volume, who wished to make
homes for the laborers of Naguadavick. His

ii

162 Sybaris and Other Homes

advertisements, his reports, and his plans all refer
to the advantages of the place for light farming,
or market gardening, or the raising of fruit. To
this object he has applied himself, — and in his
effort he has succeeded. Of course a great many
people are dissatisfied and go away. In the Vine-
land papers are long advertisements of improved
property offered for sale. But this will happen in
all new places. The restless people go to them ;
the restless people leave them. People who suc
ceed in them leave them for a larger field. People
who fail leave them to try other circumstances.
Indeed, I think I could show that of a given num
ber of persons in a community, even as settled as
is Boston, the chances are, taking the average of
years, that one twelfth will have removed from
that city before one year is over. Vineland is no
Eden or Fairyland. It requires work, perhaps as
much as any place in the world. But by a few
simple arrangements it is made easy for people
with small capital to establish themselves there.
It follows that large numbers do establish them
selves, and that, of those numbers, a large pro
portion remains. The following letter from a
" comparative cripple " — a carpenter-farmer —
will show what has been done in a single instance,
which seems to be in no way exceptional.

VINELAND, LANDIS AVENUE,
near Main Road, May 6, 1868.

MR. EDITOR, — I have thought that a truthful record
of my farming and " getting along " experience generally

How They Live in Vineland 163

in Vineland would be of some importance, especially as
bearing on the prospects of success which have hitherto
opened, and still continue open here, to an industrious
person of small capital. To that effect I hereby treat
you to the following " fireside talk," which can be any
day fully verified by the closest investigation.

I have resided in Vineland for four years. I came
here with my family, consisting of my wife, one son, who
lost an arm at Gettysburg, and two grown-up daughters,
from Canaan, Maine. My occupation there was the
manufacturing of bedsteads and general teaming, with
some little farming. This brought me in, during six
years, an average of one hundred dollars clear annually ;
but I must say that my ambition was but very poorly
satisfied with such small " pay " for very heavy work.

As it happened, my daughter came across a " Vineland
Rural." We all perused it attentively, and, after careful
deliberation, unanimously decided that we would give a
fair trial to Vineland, more on account of our health than
anything else, as we had for some time come to the con
clusion that a milder latitude than that of Maine would
be decidedly beneficial to us all. And I would here say
that I was then a comparative cripple, and have been for
a long time constantly suffering from a most annoying
chronic disease, which all people, professional and other
wise, naturally pronounced irremediable.

Well, I came and saw Vineland, travelled some over
the track, investigated, thought, pondered, and finally
made up my mind to settle. After paying my debts in
Maine, and moving my family here, I found that we had
left, in all, two horses and one fifty-dollar bill. But we
made up our minds not to feel discouraged, come what
will. I went at once to work with my horses, stump-

164 Sybaris and Other Homes

pulling, at four dollars per day. After a while, and by
pretty strict economy, I bought the machine, improved it
somewhat, and pulled all the stumps put in my way, " on
my own hook." As we had in the mean time (as well as
for some time after) no house to go into, I hired two
rooms at two dollars per week ; bought a small cook-
stove and a few other necessary utensils ; " kept house in
a small way," and got along pretty comfortably, on the
whole. In a short time, comparatively, I was enabled to
pay one fourth cash down ; namely, one hundred and
twenty-five dollars for twenty-five acres of wild land, five
acres on Landis Avenue, on which I reside, and twenty
on Chestnut Avenue. Then I bought me another ma
chine, continued to stump for my neighbors and to clear
my own land, bought another pair of horses, and also a
pair of mules. From then till now, I " kept at it " pretty
closely. We all of us lived well enough, got supremely
satisfied with the capacities of the soil, raised excellent
truck and fruit, and this day I have all my land cleared,
thirteen acres thoroughly stumped, three acres set to
grape-vines; three acres in blackberries, two acres in
blackcap raspberries, half an acre in Philadelphia rasp
berries, beside four hundred and twenty-five apple-trees,
three hundred and seventy-six pear-trees, twenty peach-
trees, with some currant and gooseberry bushes, all in
fine growing condition. From what I have tested in the
cultivation of sweet and Irish potatoes I have determined
to set four acres in each. I also raise every year lots of
garden vegetables, — onions, beets, carrots, parsnips,
cabbages, &c., — and with this garden produce we are
highly satisfied.

My dwelling-house, which I intend to enlarge and
trim up generally as we go along, is of wood, sixteen feet

How They Live in Vineland 165

by twenty-six main building, with an L thirteen feet by
twenty-three, all one story and a half. The stables are
thirty-six by twenty-eight. And, by the bye, this leads
me to state that I intend going into raising grass and hay
at no distant day, having already been duly deliberating
on that subject, as a thing which, by proper attention, will
pay and pay well in Vineland. The nearest calculation I
can make, as to what I have done in Vineland, and
what Vineland has done to me, is simply this : I know
full well, from comparison and the offers which have at
times been made to me, that my land and buildings in
their present state show a market value of at least Ten
Thousand Dollars ($10,000), and that my machines, teams,
and farming implements are worth at least Two Thou
sand Dollars ($2,000), making up a total of Twelve Thou
sand Dollars ($12,000), which I call my Vineland Industrial
Luck. In fact, we would not by any means sell out at a
much higher figure.

I have never found any place like Vineland for an in
dustrial man to get along in. Besides, it has proven itself
to my experience and knowledge, to be a very healthy
place, particularly in my lung diseases. I am myself,
for all my hard work, in a much better condition than
I had been for long years before moving here. I need
not praise our pure, sweet, soft water. The working
season, as compared with that of Maine, is just this : you
can work out from May to October, or November, at
farthest, in that " upper region ; " here you can, on a
fair average, improve your land from February to Christ
mas, and sometimes even to New- Year's Day.

My son and daughters have helped me considerably in
work ; but they were all well paid. In fact, except a
little during my first summer here, I have had no work

1 66 Sybaris and Other Homes

whatever done for me which has not been strictly paid
for.

My family has not had one single fit of homesickness
since we arrived. They are so highly satisfied with Vine-
land that none of them would leave on any account. Be
sides, all my children have been well married in Vineland.

There are no two ways about it. A man that has a
mind to work, and has some ambition in him, will surely
get rich, even if partially crippled, and quite as poor as I
was when commencing operations here. But if a man will
put his little all in a house to begin with, and will not keep
up his industry and ambition, why, then he deserves not
to get rich anywhere, and he has only himself to blame.
Respectfully yours,

CHAS. B. WASHBURNE.

I have said that I know of nothing exceptional
in this case. I do not, however, fail to remark,
that the name of the writer is that of a family
many of the members of whom, when they have
emigrated from Maine, have done so to some
purpose, for themselves and for their country.

Here is a most condensed statement, from which
I have attempted carefully to prune the enthusiastic
declarations which old Vineland settlers always
make, of how much they like the place. It is
the history of a town, which has been made out of
nothing in eight years, without remarkable phy
sical advantages. This town now contains twelve
thousand people, living in great comfort, none of
whom had large means when they went there. It

How They Live in Vineland 167

is a town which evidently is established, and has
remarkable prospects in the future. To speak of
a single point only, which settlers will appreciate,
— here are two hundred miles of well-built roads,
in this little tract of say forty thousand acres.

It seems to owe its growth and beauty and pros
perity to a few general principles which might be
carried out anywhere. In the statement of a Com
mittee at the Paris Exposition of 1867, which gave
Mr. Landis a medal as the founder of Vineland,
these principles were stated as four.

I. That the land should be laid out with refer
ence to practical convenience.

II. That it should be laid out with reference to
beauty.

III. That societies for mutual improvement and
entertainment must be formed, and temperance
enforced, in order to promote the physical pros
perity and mental improvement and happiness of
the people. For this, also, small farming and
compact population are considered necessary.

IV. The lands and town lots are sold to actual
colonists only.

From these principles spring the details thus
described in the same paper by Mr. Landis : —

MATERIAL ELEMENTS.

i. The general plan of laying out the land, by which
peculiar facilities were afforded to industrious people to
obtain land for homesteads. To accomplish this it was
laid out in five, ten, and twenty acre lots and upwards,

1 68 Sybaris and Other Homes

at a small price, payable in one, two, three, and four
years.

2. The requirements that the houses in the town plot
be set back from the roadside at least twenty feet, and on
the farm lots at least seventy-five feet, in order to afford
room for flowers and shrubbery.

3. Requiring all colonists to plant shade-trees upon
the roadside, and to grass the roadsides.

4. Requiring colonists to build and settle upon their
lands within one year, and selling no land to other than
actual colonists.

5. The introduction of fruit-growing and the general
improvement of agriculture and horticulture.

6. The introduction of American manufactures.

7. The making of roads and other improvements at my
individual expense.

MORAL ELEMENTS.

1. The introduction of good and convenient schools.

2. The formation of agricultural and horticultural
societies.

3. The formation of church societies, for the en
couragement of morality and religion.

4. The formation of literary societies and libraries.

5. The introduction of a new temperance reform, which,
in its practical operation, appears to do away with all the
evils of intemperance.

To this statement, which includes the secret of
the prosperity of this place, I add the following
words from Mr. Landis himself.

" The reason why many settlements fail is be
cause the projectors expect to make an easy specu
lation of them without much labor and time, and

How They Live in Vineland 169

because they have no definite system which will
insure the increase of the value of lands upon the
hands of the purchasers, as well as the general pros
perity of the settlers.

" No prosperous settlement can be made with
out the personal application by the proprietor of
much care and labor over a period of many years.
He must expect to make the enterprise an exclu
sive and legitimate business."

I believe the last statement to embody a most
essential suggestion.

Vineland, in short, is a wilderness settlement in
the heart of civilization. You have not to carry
your family, your furniture, and your stores a
week's journey toward the West. You have not
to wait a week for your letters from the home you
have left behind. I have never forgotten the mo
ment when I first stepped on the platform of the
station there. I was in a new settlement, four years
only from the wilderness. The people were that
day grubbing up the brush where a new church
was to stand, in a spot which but just before had
been forest. From the car there landed with me
two families of the settlers. A woman with one
carried a canary-bird. A man of the other waited
at the baggage-car for a mould of Philadelphia ice
cream. They were new settlers, — acting like new
settlers. But, if they chose, they had canary-birds
and ice-cream as well. The incident suggested to
me the contrast between Vineland and a log-cabin
in township No. 9, in the seventh range.

HOW THEY LIVE IN BOSTON, AND
HOW THEY DIE THERE

" ATAHERE is not one word in the paper," said
-•* Laura, as she threw it over to her husband,
both of them sitting on the piazza, above the sea
at Manchester. " I do not see why they choose
to print so much trash from day to day." So she
took up " Littell's Living Age," and began reading
some of Crabb Robinson's bons-mots.

For fifteen minutes there was silence.

Bernard laid down the paper in his turn. " I
hardly see why you say there is nothing in the
paper," said he, looking a little pale and worried.
" It is true there is no battle, and there has been
no accident on the Erie Railroad for three days ;
but this account of the death of these poor little
children, whose fathers and mothers loved them as
much as you and I love Ben, is to me as terrible
as a battle, and cuts as near home as a railroad
smash."

" Children, — my dear child," said Laura, pale
in her turn now. " I saw nothing about children.
What is it? Whose children were they? "

Bernard read : —

How They Live and Die in Boston 171

From Our Own Correspondent.

The mortality of the infants in Bethlehem, which has
made every Christian mother curse the name of Herod,
is more than equalled in the terrible suffering which I do
not venture to describe. The ayuntamiento appears
powerless in the havoc ; the physicians give me no
encouragement that the plague is stayed. With my
companions, I have in the last week attended at the
funeral rites of seventy-five of these little innocents ; and
unless we receive some relief, which we do not anticipate,
I shall be obliged often to send to you the same melan
choly information.

" Melancholy information ! " said Laura, bitterly.
" Is the man a stone? — is the agony of a baby
and is the wretchedness of the mother only a
paragraph in his string of news? Where is this, -
in Mexico or in Spain? Why did not I see it?
Give me the paper ! " And she took it.

" Why, Bernard," she said, after a moment,
reproachfully, " you are not making fun of me !
You could not make that up to quiz me ! "

" No, darling," said Bernard, sadly, looking
over her shoulder; " I only added the words for
the want of which it missed your eye. There is
the story, enough sadder than I made it, and the
story will be there next week, and next week, if you
take pains to look for it. Only now you know where
to look, and you did not know before. The trim
ming which ladies wear on their summer dresses in
Wiesbaden is so important that these people can
give a quarter-column to describe that; but the

172 Sybaris and Other Homes

death of seventy-five infants in their own town is
only worth half a line of minion. I will make it
a little clearer for you." And then with his pencil
he drew a line around the words, CHOLERA
INFANTUM, 75, in the table which I copy
below : —

CITY MORTALITY. — The deaths in Boston during the
week ending at noon to-day numbered 196, — 102 males,
94 females. Americans, 149 ; Irish, 36 ; English, 3 ;
Scotch, i ; Provinces, 4 ; Germans, 2 . Consumption
had 20 victims ; cholera infantum, 75 ; dysentery and
marasmus, 1 1 each ; brain diseases, 9 ; cancer, 5 ; diar
rhoea and lung disease, 4 each ; accident, apoplexy, con
vulsions, intemperance, peritonitis, and rheumatism, 3
each ; diphtheria, debility, infantile and puerperal diseases,
typhoid and scarlet fever, old age, premature birth, 2 each ;
anaemia, inflammation of bowels, croup, dropsy, fistula,
exposure, heart disease, measles, necrosis, paralysis, scald,
and syphilis, i each. American parentage, 73 ; foreign
parentage, 123. — July 31, 1869.

" That means, dearest, that there were seventy-
five households fighting death over the cradles of
their babies last week, and that seventy-five fathers
and seventy-five mothers were defeated, and that
life is hardly worth living to them now, because
their little ones are not. If it were half round the
world, and if it were an ayuntamiento that was
puzzled, it would make a paragraph; but seeing
it is only in Suffolk Street and B Street, it is not
of so much consequence."

" Oh," said Laura, through her tears, " do not be

How They Live and Die in Boston 173

bitter about it, — these people, as you call them,
are no more careless or negligent about them than
I am. We are so happy here and the children are
so well," — and she looked anxiously at big, bounc
ing Ben in his wagon, — " that we forget there are
other people in the world. Who are these children?
I read the deaths in the papers every day, and
there have not been many names of children, —
nobody's name that I knew."

"No, dear," said Bernard again, "you did not
know them, and I did not, and they are not the
kind of people who send their deaths or their
marriages to the newspaper. They are the chil
dren of the people, who stand up to their knees in
water, that the stones may be laid firm that support
the causeway on which is laid the gravel that your
and my carriage rolls smoothly over. They are
the people who, with naked skins in a temperature
of a hundred and ten degrees, wheel the coal to
the retorts that there may be gas enough at
Selwyn's to-night, if you and I fancy we should
like to go and see Laura Keene in ' Midsummer.'
I do not know," he added after a pause, " how I
should have this cigar in my mouth at this moment
if there were not a good many of such people
somewhere. But, for all that, their names do not
get put into the newspapers when they die, unless,
by bad luck, somebody kills them."

" Do you mean to tell me," said Laura, rousing
herself with something almost of agony in her
manner, " that it is sickly in Boston, and that I

174 Sybaris and Other Homes

have not known it all this time? That Emily is
there with all her children, in the midst of an
epidemic, and that I have not known a word about
it? That was not kind!"

" No, dearest," said Bernard again, more sadly
than before, — " no, dearest. Emily's children are
as safe as yours, probably safer, so far as human
wisdom goes. There is no epidemic in Chestnut
Street, or Mount Vernon Street, or Beacon Street,
or in Worcester Street, or Chester Square, or on
Telegraph Hill, or on the Highlands. There is no
epidemic anywhere. Only where people live six
teen families in one house, with their swill-barrels in
their entries and their water draining on the floors,
the chances for life are not as good as they are at
Emily's house, where each child has a bath before
she goes to bed and a room of its own to sleep in.
All I mean is that these people live so that it be
comes a very easy matter for their children to die."

Laura sat in silence a few minutes, pushing by
Crabb Robinson and the paper both. Then she said
to Bernard, " Why is it, Bernard, that I, who have
lived all my life in Boston, know nothing about these
places that these poor children live and die in ? "

"Why is it," said he, "that I know nothing
about them, — that I take all I tell you from the
printed report of some poor fellow who is trying to
thorn up me and the other governors of this
country to do something about it? It is simply
the old story; as somebody said in London,
' When the nice people of Belgravia and the rest

How They Live and Die in Boston 175

of the West End shall be making their answers at
the day of judgment, they will have some reason
to say, " When saw we thee sick or in prison, and
did not minister to thee? " — even after it has been
explained to them that seeing one of the least of
his brethren is seeing the Lord. For in Belgravia
they do not see St. Giles, and as for visiting the
prisoners, they would find it hard to get a permit;
and as to feeding the hungry, they are afraid to
give them potatoes lest they should turn them into
beer.' "

" I don't care for that," said Laura. " I do not
mean to be cynical or satirical about this thing. I
do not live in Belgravia, and there is no place in
Boston that I dare not go to, if you go with me.
I move we go and see some of the people to
morrow. There is no danger that it would hurt
Ben, is there?"

" Not the slightest, child," said Bernard ; " we
will go as soon as you like. Will you be ready at
the 10.28?"

" Yes, or earlier. I will be ready for the early
train at 8.40. We will drive up to Beverly and
take it there."

So was it that Laura and Bernard made the fol
lowing observations.

After endless charges to Katy that Ben should be
kept out-doors till he took his nap ; and that after
his nap there should be this and that and the other,
they drove to Beverly in time for the early train.

176 Sybaris and Other Homes

It was not more than ten minutes late in Boston ;
and before ten o'clock they were on their way to
the City Hall. Laura felt all the excitement that
she felt when she first entered Paris. For, because
she had lived in Boston all her life, almost of
course, she knew nothing about it. In Paris she
had been taken to see the Hotel de Ville, and there
was a good deal about it in her journal ; in Flor
ence she had, of course, gone to Uffizi ; in Lon
don she had been taken to Guild Hall to see Gog
and Magog, but it had never occurred to any one
who managed the education of this really well-
trained young lady to take her either to the State
House in Boston, to see the machinery of the
government of the State, or to the City Hall, to
see how that of her native city was carried on.
There were pictures at the Uffizi, and only some
photographs at the City Hall.

So there was all the interest of novelty to Laura,
as her husband led her up the palatial stair
way, and brought her into the City Registrar's
handsome office. There was a little of the fear
that she was out of her place ; but this vanished
at once when the Registrar so courteously re
ceived her and her husband, though they were
both strangers to him. Bernard introduced him
self, and said, almost abruptly, being himself per
haps a little nervous, " I am sorry to see you had
a bad week last week." The Registrar understood
him on the moment, spoke of the seventy-five
cholera-infantum deaths, and gave to his visitors

How They Live and Die in Boston 177

such detail as showed to them at once that he was
no mere man of figures, and that his tables had to
him the terrible interest which Bernard had given
to them when he read to Laura. The Registrar
stood there and sounded the trumpet week by
week, and that with no uncertain sound. If those
children died when there was no necessity, his at
least was not the reponsibility.

He had at once invited Laura into his airy and
elegant office, and had given her a chair. In a
moment more he brought to her husband the large
folio, in which every detail reported to him of the
deaths of the last week was written down. Bernard
having gained his permission to use these tables,
explained to Laura what they were to do.

He had brought with him a little memorandum-
book, which he gave to her, that she might copy
upon it each of the names of the seventy-five little
children who had died from this single disease.
She selected these from all the other deaths. She
did not enter the birthplaces of the children, nor
the names of their fathers and mothers, nor the
other facts which she found in the Registry. Her
little table, which I will only copy in part, assumed
this aspect: —

BOSTON. CHOLERA INFANTUM. July 24-July 31, 1869.

No. i. Mary A. Murphy, i y. 7 mos., 22 Davenport Street, Ward 15

2. Sarah Eaton, 2 mos., 102 Portland Street, " 4

3. Edith M. Dillman, 5 mos., iQTrask Place, " 13

4. Gertie F. Tucker, 6 mos., Eutaw Street, " i

5. John McLaughlin, 8 mos., 61 Prince Street, " 3.

6. Mary McCarty, 2 mos., 225 Havre Street, " i.
and so on. 12

178 Sybaris and Other Homes

While she was copying, Bernard, on a little map
of the city he had with him, was making red crosses
with a pencil, midway in the streets where the
deaths occurred. He had finished almost as soon
as she had. Then he returned the Registry to the
office, with his thanks, and they both went down
again to the carriage, leaving for some future day
an investigation of the various curiosities of the
City Hall.

" Drive to Suffolk Street," said Bernard, as he
entered the carriage ; and then to his wife, " Well,
darling, it begins to look real now. How much
more one feels it when he sees the names of the
little things ! "

" Do we ever feel anything, Bernard, till we look
at it piecemeal, or in the detail? Did you notice,
— no, the figures were not on your side of the
book, but, Bernard, almost all of these children are
less than a year old. Now we always thought that
the second year, while they were teething, was the
dangerous year for children. But see there," and
she took out her note-book, " in my first twenty-
two names there is Will Sullivan, three years old ;
one boy of one year, and one girl of one year and
seven months ; and all the others are less than a
year." She found afterwards that on her whole
register there were but eight who had passed twelve
months.

" Now," said Bernard, " look at my little map."
And he showed her the map. " The worst street,"
said he, " is Island Street, down on the flats in Rox-

How They Live and Die in Boston 179

bury, where the bad smells come from. If you
had ever been there you would wonder that any of
them were left alive. But of old Boston, which is
all we can do to-day, here are the places."

"Queer," said Laura; " they are in two rows,
with a white belt, half a mile wide between."

" Yes ; but that belt, you see, is the business part
of the town, where nobody lives, and Fort Hill,
which they are digging down, and the Com
mon and Beacon Hill. Here at the North End
is Copp's Hill ; you see nobody has died there.
On the original three mountains of Boston, on its
high lands, not one of our seventy-five babies
lived or died."

Laura studied the list then with some care.
There was not one child on her list from Beacon
Street, Chestnut Street, or Pinckney Street. And
it was not merely hillsides that were exempt.
There were no deaths in Union Park, Worcester
Street, Springfield Street, Chester Square ; not one
death in any of the very nice streets where most
of her friends lived and she visited most. And the
largest parts, as she had said, were in two clumps
together.

"What are these clumps? " said she.

" This on the north is what used to be called the
Millpond. It was filled up half a century ago. Of
the thirty-seven children whose homes I could find,
seven lived there.

" This on the south is the Church Street district,
joined to the region north of Dover Street. They

180 Sybaris and Other Homes

are trying now to raise the Church Street district.
In this clump there are fifteen children.

" This death in Eliot Street must have been on
upland ; these in Russell Place and Phillips Place,
and these in Prince Street, Cooper Street, Holden
Court, Langdon Place, and Samoset Place, at the
North End. But of all the other thirty, I think
the homes were where God Almighty made the
water flow. But it is not that so much. It is that
the poor wretches have no air. What was it Sar
gent used to tell us, that the science of health was
the science of getting people into pure air. You
shall see as soon as we set foot on the ground what
chance there is for breathing, night or day. They
have fared well enough in Rutland Street, Waltham
Street, Tremont Street, on Commonwealth Avenue,
Newbury Street, and Marlborough Street, though
these streets are all on made land. These are
well-drained and well-aired streets. Air is what
you want. Now look here."

The carriage stopped at the corner of Dover and
Suffolk Streets, and the coachman asked, "What
number?" But Bernard dismissed him, telling
Laura that for what was left they had better go on
foot. So they came to a wooden house, with rooms
each side of the door, two stones high with attics;
not so large, as he bade her observe, as the house
they had left in Manchester.

"How in the world are you going to get in?"
said Laura, timidly.

" Oh, I shall walk in," said Bernard, and he did,

How They Live and Die in Boston 1 8 1

the door being wide open. He tapped at the first
door, and immediately a stout Irishwoman ap
peared, to whom Bernard addressed himself. The
moment there was any evidence of conversation,
she was joined by another and another.

Bernard whipped out a little note-book and
pencil.

" Can you tell me, ma'am, how many families
there are on this floor? "

" There 's four, sir, live in here, and this woman
lives in the room opposite."

" And how many children are there? "

" I 've got one girl, and Mrs. McDaniel here, she
has two boys, and Mrs. McEna she has one girl
and two boys, and Mrs. Liener here, she has one
boy," and Mrs. Liener blushed and was pleased
and confirmed the statement. Bernard asked if
they had all been vaccinated, and was assured they
had, with the additional assurance that the Mc
Daniel boys were men grown. Meanwhile Laura
availed herself of the freedom of a free country to
look into the rooms right and left of her which the
interlocutors had left open that they might enjoy
the colloquy.

Upstairs then proceeded Bernard, Laura follow
ing. The first door gave no answer to his tap, the
second was wide open, and Laura saw a woman
lying on the bed, not asleep, however. Laura took
the census here, — there was this woman, who had
two boys, Mrs. O'Brien, who had one girl, and
Jerry Regan, who had no children, who occupied

1 82 Sybaris and Other Homes

the four rooms on this floor. Upstairs in the
attics were only the McDonalds (other McDonalds
from the first floor), and the Farnums, each with
one boy. Here were nine families, but none of
them were named K .

So Bernard asked the second Mrs. McDonald if

there were not a little child named K who

died here last week.

" Oh, that, sir, was in the basement," said Mrs.
McDonald. And it proved that they had let the
basement go by, not suspecting that there was
any.

Thus far the twelve rooms, of which they had in
spected eight, were almost exactly alike, but that
four were attics. Rooms nearly square and about
ten feet by twelve. Some of them had two bed
steads, always with high, cumbrous head and
foot boards, while in one, as Laura observed, which
had a cooking-stove, there was no bedstead. Some
of them were tolerably neat, — one, in which the
woman was lying down, hopelessly dirty. Of the
children spoken of, they had only seen one. He
was the junior McDonald, in the attic, who, under
the auspices of Mrs. McDonald and Mrs. Farnum,
was walking his first steps, and crowed and laughed
at the visitors very prettily. All the other children
had sought wider quarters. From this inspection
they went down the narrow stairways into what
was called the basement. It was almost wholly
below the street, and in no way differed from what
is usually called a cellar. Here they found Mr.

How They Live and Die in Boston 183

Kellarin and Mrs. West, but still no Mrs. K .

The floor of the entry was wet from the overrunning
of the water-faucet which supplied the house, and
all the region was damp, as a cellar is apt to be
which is much below the tide level. Bernard asked
Mr. Kellarin, who seemed to be rather cross, if

Mrs. K did not live here. " No, — no such

woman here ! "

" But did not a little child die here last week? "

" Oh, yes, — that was in the back room ; no one
is there now. She has moved next door."

"Thank God for that," said Laura to her hus
band, as they crossed the wretched alley. " Noth
ing can be worse than where she was."

True enough. That floor was wet from the slop
of the water. The air was wet, because the sun
never kissed it. The rooms were so chilly and so
dark ! And the smell !

Across the alley was a little brown house about
as big as the coachman's house at Manchester. It
was every way nicer than that they had left, though

so small. Here poor Mrs. K came to meet

them at the first door. Laura felt that it was she,
she looked so sad and so sick. Just a black rag
of some kind she had put around her, and when
Laura spoke to her kindly and asked about her
little boy, and the poor woman told her it was her
only child, and that he was sick such a little while,
the two women were sisters. The four families in

this house were all young. K , Leonard,

Driscoll, Agin, with their wives, — they all had

184 Sybaris and Other Homes

but two boys and one girl, — only seven people to
live in four rooms, which if you had put them
together would have made a room twenty feet
square.

In the house opposite, which they had visited
first, were thirty-one persons in fourteen so-called
rooms. What had been the yard of this house
had been taken up by another tenement building.

I must not attempt to tell in such detail of each
of the visits which Laura made this busy morning.
Bernard told her, as they drove back to the train
at ten o'clock, that she had knocked off more calls
in her three hours than he ever did in his most
successful work of his most successful New Year's
Day of his bachelor life in New York. " You have
added to your visiting list," said he, " as nearly as
I can make it up at this moment, thirteen Mrs.
Flahertys and twelve gentlemen of that name,
eleven Mrs. Sullivans, six Mrs. Feenans and
their husbands, three Mrs. McLanes, and two
Mrs. McTanes, besides miscellaneous names not
to be mentioned."

" Well," replied Laura, stoutly, " I wish all my
other friends were as cordial to me as these good
women have been, — I wish they would be half as
well employed when I called on them, — and I
wish, on the whole, that they made as much of
their advantages as these people do of what we
cannot call their advantages."

It is certainly true, that in many instances the
instinctive vigor of a woman, and that Divine

How They Live and Die in Boston 185

Principle which has given to a wife the establish
ment and the comfort of a home, — which among
this class of persons is a principle still respected
and accepted, — sustain the women who are forced
to live in these crowded cells with their husbands
and children, so that they often retain decency,
order, and even neatness, where one would say it
is impossible. Sweetness of air, freshness, or
cheerfulness, it is, of course, wholly beyond their
power to give.

Laura and Bernard had been snubbed scarcely
anywhere. Once, when Laura was the spokes
woman, and asked timidly, " Does not Mrs. Weiss
live here?" she got a very sharp "No." When
poor Laura varied her question, the answer was,
" No, she died here ; " and Laura, who had
only taken note of children's death on her
memorandum-book, found that mother and child
had died together. The landlady, to whom she
was talking, knew nothing of her tenants, — or pre
tended to know nothing, — and made haste to usher
her guests out of the wretched grocer-shop, where,
if they had asked for bad whiskey, they would
have had good chance for more cordial welcome.

They called at one house which always reminds
me, as I go to my train, of the front of a menagerie
cage, where the little monkeys may be seen among
a few of larger growth, performing behind. It is
four stories high, and has no entry or hall in it,
every room opening by its one door on the four
front piazzas which rise above each other. Each

1 86 Sybaris and Other Homes

room has, in the rear, two closets only lighted from
the doors, one of which may be eight feet square ;
the other is narrower. The front room, which
opens on the piazza, is fifteen by thirteen perhaps.
This is a suite for a family. And any day you
pass you may see the children of forty such
families disporting themselves on the piazzas. The
reason why there are no windows in the back wall
is that there is another similar building, which has
been squeezed in there in a space so narrow that
it is not nine feet from the windows and doors to
the wall opposite, — and, of that nine feet, four or
five must be given to the piazza. Stop on your
way down Lincoln Street, Mr. Alderman, and look
at that building; do not be satisfied with the
Lincoln Street front, but try the other front, and
guess what are the chances for life there. As the
building is arranged, it will " accommodate," I
believe, sixty families, — nearly as many human
beings as would be permitted by the United States
statute on an emigrant vessel of the same size.
Yet on the emigrant vessel there are windsails to
pump out the air, — there is the certainty of fresh
air on deck, and the best of it. And there, at the
worst, the imprisonment is but for a few weeks.
But, in this anchored hell, the child who is born
must live five years before he has wit enough and
strength enough to run away.

Here are Bernard's notes on the houses where
he and his wife first called. I have only described
the first tenement of the first two.

How They Live and Die in Boston 187

13 EMERALD STREET. Two tenement-houses adjoin
ing each other. There are thirteen families in one and
ten in the other. The water-pipes are put up in the
most shameful manner. They must of necessity freeze
up at the very first frost. Only one faucet for each tene
ment-house, — /. <?., twenty-three families have two faucets
to draw from. There is no way of getting to the faucet
without wading in dirty water, the drains being all out of
order. Two of the most filthy privies entirely open for
these twenty-three families, so much out of repair as to
be dangerous to enter. The boards are broken away,
so that you can see into the vaults. The only reason
why the people in the house are not all dead is because
they keep their own places much cleaner than anybody
could naturally expect. Miserable places, out of repair,
the plastering off the walls and ceilings, — no chance to
whitewash, for there is no place to whitewash in many of
the rooms.

TENEMENT- HOUSE 72 MIDDLESEX STREET. Sixteen
families live in this house. The staircase is so narrow
and dark that it is a wonder how the children, with
whom it abounds, are not daily injured. In the event of
a fire it might be that not one of the families upstairs
could be saved. There is very fair accommodation here
for water. No water-closets, however, and but one privy
in four compartments for the whole sixteen families.
The passages below are in a filthy condition, owing to
unsuitable arrangements for the refuse.

Their whole inspection was on the southern side
of the white stripe across Bernard's map. And
they had not time that day to go to Island Street.
Once or twice they came upon nice, cheerful

1 88 Sybaris and Other Homes

houses, where Laura said the people had good
friends, she was sure, and she would not offer her
sympathy. But there were many of these poor
Irishwomen who were glad of her visit, and with
whom she will keep up her visiting acquaintance
long.

" I know," said Laura, as they rode home, " that
you hate to be constantly making laws, and con
trolling people by laws, and I know how your father
says that the best government is that which gov
erns least; but I should think something might be
done to give such people as these a better chance."

" My dear," said Bernard, " our system in Mas
sachusetts about laws is that of Ensign Stebbins.
We take great pains about making the laws, and
we take equal pains to let them alone when we
have made them." And Bernard took from his
pocket a little blue pamphlet which contained the
tenement law of 1868.

" How many of these houses had a fire-escape?
Did you notice? " said he.

" What is a fire-escape? " replied Laura. " Did
any of them have one?"

" Not that I saw," said Bernard. " But here is
the act : ' Every such house shall have a fire-
escape/ That is Section 3. From Section 4 I
learn that these water-closets in Emerald and
Middlesex Streets must have been ' approved by
the Board of Health.' From Section 6, that that
basement in Emerald Street could not have been
occupied ' without a permit from the Board of

How They Live and Die in Boston 189

Health ; ' nor at all unless it was ' perfectly drained.'
From Section 8 I learn that all these houses must
( have suitable conveniences for garbage,' and
so on, and so on.

" How many times have you noticed the owners'
names to-day? "

" Not once," stared Laura.

"Nor I. But listen: 'Every tenement or lodg
ing house shall have legibly posted or painted on
the wall or door in the entry the name and address
of the owner/ — that is the law, dear Portia. And
here is the law about whitewash : ' Every house
thus occupied shall be whitewashed every April
and October.' My dear, the law might have been
made for Sybaris. But the only time I ever heard
of a prosecution under it, an ex-mayor defended
the landlord, knew how to rip up the indictment,
and that was the end of that. Oh, there is law
enough, dear child."

" Well, what can we do? " persisted Laura.

" Do, child ? We can make public opinion. The
first time Dr. Shurtleff asks you to go to ride, ask
him to stop and call with you on some friends
of yours in the Crystal Palace. That is the best
thing you can do."

But for himself, Bernard sent me his observa
tions, and I determined to print them.

I confess that I was surprised, when I first
looked over this list of seventy-five deaths by
cholera infantum in the last week of July, to see

190 Sybaris and Other Homes

that, of the whole number, twelve were in the
three wards which are made of the territory of
Roxbury. It seemed curious, at first sight, that
the mortality in a so-called country town, just now
annexed to the compact city, should be even
larger in proportion to the population than that
of the more compact section. But a moment's
examination of the localities removed my surprise.
These eleven deaths were all of them in houses
on the low, flat land, which would once have been
called saltmarsh, which ought, perhaps, never to
have been built upon at all, without such elevation
of the streets as should give proper drainage to
the houses. All of them but two or three proved,
on inquiry, to be in tenement-houses of the most
crowded character.

My first visit among them was in Island Street;
it is not yet accepted by the city, which takes no
responsibility for its drainage or its grading. It
will be known by residents in Boston as the street
which leads to the so-called " Island " where were
the odious bone-burning establishments. Here
twin children had died in a hut, standing by itself,
worth its annual rental perhaps, which I think
would be considered in any comfortable country
town in New England unfit for the residence of
men, but which here was regarded by its occupants
as particularly desirable because they were alone.
Two of the other deaths were in Adams Street
and Chadwick Street, which, though they run
down upon the flats, are occupied by a class of

How They Live and Die in Boston 191

tenements much superior to the others. I visited
every tenement in Phoenix Place, which is a fair
enough illustration, in its melancholy uniformity,
of the whole class. It is a narrow court of eight
houses, — four on each side. They are lightly
built of wood, all on the same plan. The two end
houses have each a shop in one side. All the
houses are parted in the middle by an entry with a
staircase ; — on each side of this entry is a " suite "
of rooms, always two. In no case did I find any
family occupying more than these two rooms.
Deducting the shops, then, here were thirty tene
ments, — each of two rooms, — and these were
occupied by thirty families, of which the smallest
was a man and his wife, — the largest a man and
his wife with eight children. The population was
sixty adults and sixty-five children in the sixty
rooms, each of which was perhaps twelve feet
square. The summer atmosphere of these places
is odious, but I believe it is better than the winter
atmosphere. The houses have the great advantage
of standing separately from each other, so as to ad
mit of end windows, and ventilation between every
series of four tenements. But the lots are so small
that all privy arrangements and deposits of offals
are horribly near the open windows. The wretched
way in which a woman in such a house tells you
that her baby died yesterday, as if the child died of
course, and she never ought to have expected that
it would live, is a sad enough intimation that the
tenants themselves know the risk they are running.

192 Sybaris and Other Homes

I have not cared to go into detail, however.
My object is accomplished in calling attention to
the single fact that of these eleven deaths in Rox-
bury, by cholera infantum, not one took place on
the proper upland. In the mortality of the same
week in the peninsula of old Boston, out of thirty-
eight such deaths, none took place on either of
the hills, and only eight on land which had never
been flowed over by the sea.

In the epidemic among children in the summer
of 1864 one thousand children of less than five
years of age died in Boston in one hundred days.
I suppose that of the Boston people who read
these pages not one in ten knows that there was
any such epidemic. It did not rage among the chil
dren of people who read Fields and Osgood's books ;
it raged in such places as I have been describing.

If the deaths had been proportional among all
classes of society, at least ten of these deaths
would have taken away infants from the parish of
which I am a minister, which embraces about one
per cent of the population of the city.

But that is a body of people in comfortable cir
cumstances, living in comfortable homes. And,
in fact, in that epidemic not one of our children
died. So untrue is it that

" Pallida mors aequo pulsat pede pauperum tabernas
regumque turres." x

1 " Pale death steps on with equal step ; although
A hut or palace is the scene of woe."

HOMES FOR BOSTON LABORERS

IN addition to the statement I have made,
as to the houses in which the greater part of
the laboring men of Boston live with their families
at the present moment, I am tempted to add some
facts as to the details of the arrangements which
might be made for them. They might all own
their houses, — as so many of the laboring men do
in our smaller cities, — and yet, at the same time,
follow up their daily work in the very heart of
Boston. To illustrate this possibility, I have pub
lished here the ideal sketch of the life of the
suburbs of Naguadavick. To show some of the
detail in practice, I have published the historical
sketch of Vineland and its neighborhood. The
object of this volume is not fulfilled, unless it shows
how similar arrangements may be carried out for
the laboring men of Boston.

I know very well that many persons suppose that
such arrangements are made thoroughly well now.
They know that there are a great many pretty
villages around Boston, from which crowded special
trains run in every morning, and to which they
return at night. And people who will read this

13

194 Sybaris and Other Homes

book will be apt to say that anybody who wants to
live in Melrose or Newton or Hyde Park now can
do so ; that there needs no urging either of capi
talist or of laborer ; that the residence of laboring
men in the suburbs is a thing which will settle
itself, and may be left to settle itself.

I am to reply, 'then, to this comfortable laissez
faire notion first of all. I have to say, that, as
matter of fact, it is not true that what we call,
popularly, the laboring men and women of Bos
ton live in any considerable numbers in the suburbs
reached by railway. Many of them live in Charles-
town, Roxbury, and South Boston, where they can
use the short lines of street cars to go to their
morning work. But this number, even, is incon
siderable, compared with the large number of day-
laborers needed for the day's work of the city.
Of the classes of skilled workmen, of whom we do
not speak as day-laborers, a considerable propor
tion live in the suburbs accessible by steam, — the
places where they can obtain freehold. Mechanics,
clerks in retail or wholesale stores, bankers' clerks,
and other persons whose incomes are a little above
the wages of the day-laborer, so called, avail them
selves freely of the relief which even in their pres
ent management the steam railroads give, and
bring up their children thus, — where only, per
haps, children should be brought up, — in the
country. But the number even of these who are
thus provided for is much smaller than could be
wished; and the arrangements in many regards

Homes for Boston Laborers 195

are cumbrous and inconvenient. Granting, how
ever, that they can take care of themselves, there
is left the much larger class of women who work
in shops or stores, and the class, yet larger, of men
who work as porters, or stevedores, or as hod-car
riers, or at other hard labor in building or in fac
tories, — who live, as they suppose from necessity,
in such hired tenements as have been described.
They no more think of the possibility of their
purchasing their own homes than they think of
translating the Hebrew Bible. Of one hundred
and thirty sewing-women engaged at Jordan &
Marsh's sewing-rooms, September 7, 1869, ninety-
three lived in Boston proper, twenty-three in South
Boston and East Boston, and only fourteen out
of town. Of eighty- two the same day at work at
Hovey & Co.'s, forty-five lived in Boston proper,
twenty-seven in South Boston and East Boston,
and only ten out of town.

I have to say, next, that emigration, though it
be only emigration for ten miles, has, in fact, never
thriven in this world, unless it has been well led.
Unless, at one or another period of the emigration,
the way has been smoothed and prepared by men
of intelligence, and by the union of the several
interests engaged, no emigration has ever gone
forward prosperously. The people of this country
are utterly indifferent to what they owe to the men
who contrived the magnificent system of the Land
Laws of the United States, which of themselves
give exactly the encouragement to the Western

196 Sybaris and Other Homes

emigrant that I would secure for the emigrant
whom I would lead from Lucas Street into
Dorchester to-day. And, for an instance on
the other side, the reason that the South, eager for
emigration to-day, cannot lure the laboring men
it needs into its waste field by all its magnificent
promises, is because no set of men care enough
for that wave of civilization to put themselves hu
manely and deliberately at work, on a large scale,
for the organization of emigration southward.

In the old communities of Greece this thing was
better understood. To lead a colony, and thus
to establish a state, was considered by Miltiades,
and Themistocles, and Alcibiades, and Lysias, and
Isocrates, — not to name a hundred others, — as
being an honor as great as man could claim. I
wish there were more of such ambition among the
young men of spirit, of fortune, or of education,
whom I meet every day, wondering and even ask
ing what America has for them to do, now that
the war is over. I am told that Lord Bacon
classed the founders of cities among the first of
men.

As the people of Naguadavick found, — in the
experience of their history contained in this vol
ume, — the enterprise of establishing a" suburb of
ease " for laboring men near a great city requires
the co-operation of three sets of people, who are
wholly unused to act together. It requires the
co-operation of the owner of land, of the managers
of the railway, and of the settlers who are to buy

Homes for Boston Laborers 197

their homes. Neither of these will move, if he
have not confidence in the other.

1. The owner of the land must be willing to de
vote from six hundred to a thousand acres within
half an hour's ride by steam of the city to the
enterprise. He must look for sure but not exor
bitant profits, to be secured within ten years.

2. The railroad managers must look to the grow
ing up of traffic where at the beginning there is
absolutely nothing ; and, because that traffic is to
be all their own, they must at the outset provide for
it much more accommodation than its present re
turns will warrant. It is at this point, as I believe,
that most such plans break down. The companies
are willing to sell their tickets cheap enough, but
they are not willing to run their trains at the out
set often enough or fast enough. They want the
village to exist before they grant the trains. But
nobody will go to the village until they grant the
trains.

3. No one laboring man will bell the cat in such
an enterprise. No one will go alone, — nor will
ten families go alone. The provisions must be
generous enough to induce at once general atten
tion among large numbers of people, or they will
none of them move. The reasons for their hesi
tation are obvious.

I am glad to believe that at the present time
there are good reasons for expecting the frank and
generous co-operation of all these classes in the
neighborhood of Boston upon the true principles

198 Sybaris and Other Homes

which may insure success. The questions con
nected with such emigration have been discussed
more than any others at the meetings of the Suf
folk Union for Christian Work. They never came
up for discussion there, but some intelligent man,
who had watched the present difficulties, brought
forward some important contribution toward their
solution. The lines of railway running from Bos
ton are so many, and pass through country so
favorable for the purposes proposed, that every
thoughtful traveller sees the possibility of relieving
the city by colonies in its neighborhood. Fortu
nately these railways are under the management of
men who, in general, understand that their interests
and the interests of the public are identical in
these matters. And the present condition of the
worst tenement-houses in Boston is such as to
compel the attention of laboring men and their
families to any well-considered arrangements for
their relief. Indeed, if the trade and manufacture
of Boston are to enlarge in the next twenty years
in the same proportion as in the last twenty, some
systematic provision of healthy homes for her
laboring men and women is the very first neces
sity of all.

I have attempted in this volume to show that
that provision may be made by a system which
shall involve the following details : —

I. A village site of say a thousand acres.

II. This must be generously laid out by the pro
prietors, who must maintain on the spot active

Homes for Boston Laborers 199

agents, to care for the proper condition of the
town till it can go alone.

1. These agents must keep the roads in condi
tion.

2. They must see that drainage is systematically
cared for.

3. In some localities it may be necessary that
the first owners sink the wells.

4. All negotiations with the railroads must, at
the outset, be made by the first owners.

III. The land should be divided, for our purpose
near Boston, into lots of about 10,000, 20,000, and
40,000 feet, to provide for settlers of various re
sources. These lots should be offered for sale on
easy terms, with great encouragement, however, for
cash payments. Mr. Landis requires one fourth
down, and the remainder in three payments in
three successive years. The Illinois railroads re
quire one tenth down, and the remainder in nine
payments in nine successive years. Probably the
first arrangement is the better for our purpose
here.

The price of lots having been fixed at the out
set, so as to give a handsome profit to the original
landholder, should never be changed by him.

All sales should be made on condition of con
siderable improvements to be made within twelve
months. This is necessary to assure the first
settlers of neighbors and society, and to prevent
land speculation.

IV. The co-operation of the original holders

200 Sybaris and Other Homes

with the settlers in all enterprises of social im
provement, education, and amusement must be
heartily and intelligently granted.

V. The railroad companies, looking to the
steady growth of such a village, must provide from
the first, and must assure trains of cars which will
place the laboring man at his work in Boston at
seven in summer and at eight in winter.

It has been proposed by Mr. Quincy, who has
taken so cordial an interest in such plans, that
most of these companies, for the foundation of a
new village in the view here advocated, shall give
a free ticket for five years to each head of a family
who will build a house in such a town. Then rely
on the travel of the members of his family, and of
other persons, for their profit. This seems to me
honorable, simple, and satisfactory. I should ask
nothing more in addition but careful study of the
hours of trains required by laboring men, and
some security for their permanence.

As to the methods by which such men are to
get the money with which to build their houses, I
will add a few words; but I do not believe the
difficulty in the business will be found there.

Mr. Quincy has published in the daily journals
details of the co-operative house-building systems
of Philadelphia and of England, which have worked
so satisfactorily that I need only refer readers who
are interested to them.1

1 See, for one of such plans, Appendix A.

Homes for Boston Laborers 201

I am assured that at Hyde Park, near Boston,
the public offer is made by responsible parties,
that they will lend to any person who proposes to
build there three thousand dollars for that purpose,
if he invest, besides, three hundred dollars of his
own, and pledge the whole to them. They are so
confident of the increase of the value of real prop
erty in that town, that they are ready to lend on
mortgage of real estate, with so small a margin, at
the present time. This is an illustration of the
facilities offered in such places.

In the German savings-banks there is a system
which carries out with great simplicity the co
operative idea. The managers of those banks dis
count regularly to their depositors, on a regulation
universally understood. It is this : Any depositor
who can get two fellow-depositors to indorse for
him can obtain a discount from the savings-bank,
which thus becomes, not a bank of deposit for
small sums only, but a bank of discount for small
sums. In the town of Worcester, to which I have
already alluded in these pages, its prosperity
is largely due to the readiness with which the
capitalists of the town have assisted the young
mechanics and laborers in establishing themselves.
It is this readiness to give credit on fair terms
which has done so much to make that a place of
FREEHOLD.

The details of the German system are given by
Mr. Godkin in his valuable paper published in the
" North American Review " two years ago.

202 Sybaris and Other Homes

I apprehend, therefore, that working men and
working women will have no real difficulty in build
ing houses for themselves or in buying houses
ready built, so soon as the places are arranged
where these houses shall stand. The social con
dition might return of the agricultural New
England town of two generations ago, in which a
rented house was an exception to the general rule
and habit of the community. The large rents
which laboring men are now accustomed to pay
have trained their families in habits of economy
which will make it very easy for them to obtain
dwellings of their own, as soon as these dwellings
are offered to them. For the cells which have
been described on page 186 the weekly rent is two
dollars for one room and the two dark closets ad
joining. This is about the lowest rent which any
laboring man with a family pays for a home in
Boston. Most of them pay more. It is easy to
see how fast an annual payment of only one hun
dred and four dollars a year will eat up the princi
pal and the interest of such a home as such a man
may build for himself the moment land is offered
him at a fair price. And the passion for Freehold
is not extinguished among these people by a gen
eration or more of tenant life. It is pleasant to
conceive the ready response they would make to a
programme like this, put in their way in the
columns of their friends, the " Boston Herald " or
"Boston Pilot," handed in to their doors on a
broadside, or posted at the street corners : —

Homes for Boston Laborers 203

Buy Yourself a Home

One Hundred neat Houses are for sale in the
new Village of

MONTGOMERY

ONLY TWENTY MINUTES' RIDE FROM BOSTON!

By a weekly payment of
ONLY THREE DOLLARS,

any man may own, in six years' time, a pretty
House and a Garden

RENT FREE!

Large deductions can be made to purchasers who
have cash in hand.

Free Railroad Ticket for Five Years !

An announcement like this would show very
soon that the laboring class of people are not with
out reserved funds to draw upon, if they have only
a simple and safe way to place them in real estate
for their own uses.

APPENDIX

THE Constitution of a Co-operative Society for
Building, which has worked well in Philadelphia,
is explained in the following letters from Mr. Quincy and
Mr. Davis.

MODERATE HOUSES FOR MODERATE MEANS

I would now call your attention to a communication
sent to me by Edward M. Davis, of Philadelphia, de
scribing the workings of an association of which he is
President, calculated to aid the frugal and industrious in
securing homes now payable otit of future earnings; —

It is called a Building Association, but should^ called a
" Co-operative Deposit and Loan Company," as it does not
have homes built, but does receive and loan money.

There are 74 members and 1,000 shares. None of the
officers receive pay, except the Secretary, and he only $2 a
month. The Treasurer gives bonds for $1,000, but seldom
has over $50 to $100 on hand, as the money is generally
loaned the same night it is paid in to the association, We
meet in a schoolhouse and have no rent to pay. Fuel and
a janitor costs us about $15 a year. It is conducted for the
benefit of the members, and not for the benefit of the officers,
as is the case with many loan associations.

206 Sybaris and Other Homes

The receipts of the association are : —

i st. " Dues " of members, consisting of fifty cents a share,
payable monthly.

2d. Fines of five cents a share each month as penalty for
failure to pay punctually.

3d. Premiums on money loaned paid by members who
borrow.

4th. Interest received monthly at the rate of six per cent
per annum on money loaned. When from these sources the
shares are worth $100 each, a distribution is made in the
proportion in which the stock is held, and the association
comes to an end.

Only members can borrow money, Each one can borrow
$100 for each and every share, but not over $1,500 at one
time. The borrower must give to the association as security
a first mortgage on real estate for the amount borrowed, and
if there are buildings, they must be insured and the policy
transferred to the association. The borrower must also
transfer the stock on which he borrows ; must pay the
premium cash; pay his dues and interest punctually, and
all expenses of conveyancing.

Our association was started twenty-two months since. As
fifty cents each month has been paid on each share, the
amount paid in is $11, but the shares are worth $14.10 ; the
difference has been made out of premium, interest, and fines.
Judging from the operations of other similar associations, by
the time $60 has been paid in by members as " monthly dues,"
the shares will be worth $100 each; that is, the association
will hold claims on the real estate of the members, and cash
on hand, amounting to $100,000.

The loans are made by the President, stating that there
are, say, $500 in the treasury, but that he will sell $1,500 if
it is wanted, payable out of the first money in the treasury.
Some one is willing to pay five per cent premium for it,
another eight per cent, others more, and so on until it
reaches, say, twenty per cent. The buyer has fifteen shares,
and says he will take the $1,500. He gives security for

Appendix 207

$1,500, and pays interest monthly on the $i ,500, but the
premium of $300 is deducted, and he gets only $1,200 in
money. His monthly dues are $7.50 and his interest $7.50.
He therefore pays $15 a month until the shares are worth on
the books $100 ; then his mortgage is handed back, marked
paid, his policy retransferred, and his home is clear. This
occurs at the same time necessarily with every borrower, for
it is not regulated by what he pays for his money, or when
he gets it, but by \he period when the shares amount to $100.
When they do, all the borrowers are out of debt. If there is
cash on hand, it belongs to those who have not borrowed,
and will be just $100 a share for them.

The time that it takes for a society to " run out," as it is
called, depends mainly on \h.z premiums paid. If they are
low, the period is over ten years. If they could average
twenty per cent, the period would be much shorter. Money
borrowed in the first year of the association at twenty-five
per cent premium does not cost the borrower quite eight per
cent per annum. Then he has these great advantages : he
can borrow an amount almost equal to the cost of his prop
erty; can return it in small sums, and in addition partici
pate in the profits made by the association. It is the true
mode of getting a home out of future earnings. Being the
prospective owner of the place occupied, all the improve
ments inure to him. This system makes our small houses
more tastily and insures their being kept in better order,
because a home that is owned is more cared for than one
that is rented. I think that what are called building asso
ciations contribute much more towards securing homes to our
mechanics and laboring people than our ground-rent system.

A person paying $15 a month by this system at the end
of about ten years has his house clear, but if he pays the $15
as rent, at the end of the ten years the landlord has the rent
and the house too*

To carry out a plan like this it is necessary at first that
some philanthropic persons in whom the people have con-

208 Sybaris and Other Homes

fidence should, like Mr. Davis, be willing gratuitously to
devote a few hours every month to the management of
such an organization. As in the case of savings-banks,
the success of one might lead to results in the highest
degree beneficial both to the public and individuals.

JOSIAH QUINCY.

HOW THEY LIVED IN HAMPTON

A STUDY IN PRACTICAL
CHRISTIANITY

PREFACE TO NEW EDITION

1DO not know that the principle dwelt upon
in " Hampton " has been illustrated in detail
in any of the other books on co-operative manu
facture. When my friend, Mr. George Holyoake,
republished the book in London, he did me the
honor to say that it was the most satisfactory
statement which he had seen of the application
to manufacture of the principles of co-operation.
Mr. Holyoake, the father of co-operative trade, is
a high authority. As the reader will see, I am
not entitled to the credit of this handsome com
pliment ; and I am glad to place that credit
where it belongs.

As I believe, the emphasis here given to the
importance of the work of the " manufacturer,"
as the link between the capitalist on the one side
and the workman on the other, is of central and
essential importance in all such undertakings. I
shall therefore state here in some detail the his
tory of this book. It was first published in 1888.

My friend, Mr. William Babcock Weeden, of
Providence, is well known among all students of
American history by his valuable book on " The
Economic and Social History of New England."

212 How They Lived in Hampton

All his readers do not know, perhaps, that this is
the same Mr. Weeden who, at the head of the
Weybosset and other woollen mills, has, in the
last generation, clothed millions on millions of
people who have not known to whom they were
indebted. He is so intimately acquainted with the
principles and details of the sciences involved in
the woollen manufacture that in such matters he
is one of the first authorities.

Now, there is a great deal of loose talk about
what is called " co-operation." In mixed circles,
especially in circles where people talk about sub
jects of which they know nothing, there is a con
venient habit of using the word " co-operation " as
a sort of spell. Especially when there is friction
between capitalist and workmen, as between the
man who owns the land and the man who guides
the plough, it is very convenient to say, in an
oracular way, that all difficulties must be settled
by co-operation. Then the talk drifts off either
into rhapsodies as to the cleanness of the streets
in Paris, or into guesses as to the fortunes of wheat,
three months afterward.

Mr. Weeden, as an intelligent manufacturer,
really knew what were the possibilities and the
impossibilities in such matters. He took the
pains to state them in a vigorous scientific paper
which he read before the " Examiner Club " of
Boston not long after the terrible pecuniary crisis
of 1873-74. He pointed out in it the various ele
ments of energy and of intelligence which must

Preface to New Edition 2 1 3

combine in the manufacture of all textile articles.
And he showed what I may call the absurdity of
supposing that because a man knows how to spin
yarn well, he should know how to place a bale of
flannel on the New York market. In reading
this paper before the " Examiner Club " he pre
sented to a thoughtful and intelligent jury his
view of the recognition as an important factor of
the duty of the " enterpriser," or " undertaker."

After hearing this statement, I told him that
it ought to be presented, not only to such a
circle as that, but to the " general public," to all
sorts and conditions of men. I said that this
could only be done in the concrete, — I suppose
I said that nothing is ever really taught to the
average man which has not been presented in
the concrete, — as well as in abstract or theoreti
cal forms. I told him that if we put this under
the eye of a million readers, it would have a bet
ter chance of being fairly tested than if we left
it to the study of scientific sociologists. Mr.
Weeden was not displeased at the suggestion ;
and when I offered to furnish the ink, paper, and
pen work, and to work out the drama, so to
speak, with persons who should, as far as I could
make them, present the scheme in living action
before those who would read, Mr. Weeden agreed
to contribute the details of the working plan, —
so that there need be no danger that in the
enthusiasm of authorship I should overstate or
understate any possibilities or probabilities, or

214 How They Lived in Hampton

expectations, or dangers. I therefore dressed up
this plan of co-operation, not between two par
ties, capitalist and workman, but between three,

— capitalist, " enterpriser," and workman, — in a
short story called

BACK TO BACK.

It was published in two numbers in " Harper's
Magazine." Here it met its million readers.
Messrs. Harper reprinted it at once in their Half-
Hour Series, in a little waistcoat pocket volume
which the reader can command now if he will
send twenty-five cents to that firm, in Franklin
Square, New York City.

We had no reason to be disappointed in the
attention it received. For myself, I was addressed
at once by three different owners of moribund
woollen mills, who offered to place in my hands
the plant of these establishments if I would organ
ize and set in operation " Back to Back " com
panies, where capital, enterprise, and industry
should thus share righteously in the results. Un
fortunately for me, — shall I say for mankind?

— I had not been trained to the methods or
processes of manufacture, or to those of the
wool or woollen trade. And I was obliged to
decline all three flattering offers. But, as I need
hardly say, I have taken a personal interest ever
since in the fortunes of the mills which might
have been mine.

I have had reason to think, however, that Mr.

Preface to New Edition 215

Weeden's sensible and practical suggestions were
not without their effect among the men who own
textile mills, and those who worked in them.
My friend, Mr. George A. Chase, now for many
years at the head of the Bourne Mill near Fall
River, has shown to the world from year to year
the advantages which have been derived there
from the system of co-operative work as far as
they have adopted it, and the confidence he has
in the system has encouraged me in attempting
to explain it in more detail in the description of
life in the imagined village of Hampton.

Mr. Nelson, the energetic and accomplished chief
of the co-operative works at Le Claire in Illinois,
is kind enough to send me from time to time the
accounts of the triumphs won in that Arcadia.

The common remark of persons interested in
social science is that co-operation in trade has
succeeded in England, that co-operation in bank
ing has succeeded in Germany, that co-operation
for the building of homes has succeeded in Amer
ica, but that there has been no successful en
terprise on a large scale where a large number
of persons have united together in the interest
of manufacture, or any such system of sharing in
the risk and sharing in the profits of the adven
ture, — as risk and profit are shared, say, in the
whale fishery or mackerel fishery of America,
or in the Rochdale co-operation of buying and
selling. This familiar remark is referred to by
one of the characters in this book.

216 How They Lived in Hampton

It is to be taken with a good deal of allowance,
like most such remarks. Such enterprises as
those of Guise in France, and of the great gas
company in Manchester, England, as the Bourne
Mill in Fall River and of Le Claire in Illinois,
are very considerable exceptions, well worth care
ful study. These are all on a large scale. On
what would be called a small scale, — that is,
where the co-operators are not more than eight
or ten in number, — there are literally thousands
in our manufacturing States,

The phrase " Corporation is co-operation " is
true ; and to a very large extent — an extent
much larger indeed than the average talker knows
— it makes of the American working man a capi
talist, and allies the capitalist to the workman.

To recur to the history of the inception of
" Hampton," the plan of co-operation here brought
forward had all been made public as early as 1877
in " Back to Back." For that little book, as
I have said, Mr. Weeden had himself furnished all
of what I may call the working machinery. The
figures which show what was proposed and what
was achieved are all his; and the definite state
ments of the agreements which bound the parties
together. For ten years after the publication of
that book, I had occasion, as I have intimated, to
know that other people besides ourselves were in
terested in such figures, plans, and agreements.

In the year 1887, there was what seemed to me
another opportunity for presenting them formally

Preface to New Edition 217

to the People of America. The Sunday School
Union offered a prize for the best essay on capital
and labor. I believed, as I still believe, that
the plans worked out in Max Rising's flannel mill
at Pigotsville would do good service even on a
larger scale, " for other parts of America," as
Thomas's Almanac says. I may say in passing
that the latitude and longitude of the imagined
Pigotsville are nearly those of my own summer
home in Rhode Island already known to this reader.
With careful conference again with Mr. Weeden,
who gave his cordial interest to the preparation of
the new book, I wrote in the summer and autumn
of 1887, " How They Lived in Hampton." I was
able to introduce into it some of my own theories
and practices as to libraries, churches, banks, and
saving institutions, as the reader will see. We
put the book on typewriter and sent it to the
Philadelphia competition.

No, it did not receive the prize. This was
awarded to a gentleman on the Pacific Coast.

I have never been surprised, and have never
been sorry. To say the truth, the book is only
likely to interest those who are interested in that
sort of thing, — to borrow Abram Lincoln's in
imitable phrase. And I had and have no idea
that any committee of clergymen — even though,
like the judges in this competition, they be much
above the average of their profession — care much
about the manufacture of flannel, or dare much to
give an opinion about it. So we soon had the

2i 8 How They Lived in Hampton

manuscript on our hands again. What was well
was, that it had got itself written. And this would
not have happened but for the happy providence
of the competition.

My friend, Mr. Stilman Smith, at that time the
publisher of the magazine, " Lend a Hand," brought
out the book at once, and we cast it in the face
of a rather indifferent world. Then an interesting
thing happened. As the ministers had been afraid
of it (in my guess) because they did not know
about woollens, now the literary critics were
afraid of it because they feared it contained dyna
mite, anarchy, and other elements prejudicial to
the civilization of the century, and to Philistine
order in general. I do not think that any journal
in America took pains to give any account of its
contents to anybody. It might conceal socialism,
anarchy, as I said, and a general destruction of
mankind, including the counting-room of the
" Thunderer " or the " Busy-Body."

To a young author this would have seemed dis
couraging. But to an old fox like me, — to one
who had written " book notices " in his day,
and who knew how badly they were written, — No.
"The people who like that sort of thing" find
out. There would come a letter from a back
county in Kentucky, enclosing its modest post-
stamps or money order. There would be some
workman in Cincinnati who had seen another
workman's copy in a smoking-car. And so from
week to week the little book has advertised itself

Preface to New Edition 2 1 9

without much help, and certainly with no hin
drance, from the critics.

I have a right, I believe, to speak with a certain
confidence, after these experiences of forty years,
as to the American wish or determination in
the management of such affairs. As is intimated
in the essay in the eighth volume of this series on
the Nationalism of New England, it is pity of
pities that our fathers did not carry on their first
experiments with the inventions of Hargreaves —
the spinning-jenny and the power looms — by the
same mutual laws of co-operative industry with
which they established the whale fishery.

It is but right, however, to note the dangers of
such an establishment as is imagined at our little
" Hampton." First, and chiefly, the inhabitants
of such a village, with no other occupations than
these here suggested, would become terribly sick
of each other and of life. The truth is, that the
making of textile fabrics is not the chief end of
man. My friends, Hon. Hannibal Manchester
and General Asdrubal Lanark, think it is; as I
believe Adam Smith and Robert Owen thought
before they were born. But all four of them,
happily, are mistaken; and happily the propor
tion of spinners and weavers grows smaller every
day. One man can make as much cotton cloth
to-day as three men could forty years ago. It

220 How They Lived in Hampton

is as foolish to discuss social order as if the
great majority of the world were mill hands, as
it is to discuss it as another generation did, as if
most men were drudges, — clowns, as Shakespeare
would have called them, — or the riff-raff of Corio-
lanus's scorn.

I should say, then, that the danger of such an
establishment as is described at Hampton is the
monotony or uniformity of the life there. It is a
pity to have a village made from one industry and
only one.

If Mr. Spinner or Mr. Workman could import
into their Arcadia Mr. Smith, or Mr. Sole, or Mr.
Upperleather, or Mr. Pansy, or Mr. Cabbage, so
as to vary the industries of the place, they would
make a much more attractive Hampton.

I suppose that the weak spot in an establishment
so well intended as Pullman, in the neighborhood
of Chicago, was the monotony. I suppose that
varying industries give an opportunity for the
genius or native make-up of each child, which is
quite necessary for the best civilization.

It may be said in passing, perhaps, that the
chief end of man is to live to the glory of God.

EDWARD E. HALE.

ROXBURY,/#tt£ 26, I9OO.

PREFACE TO THE EDITION OF 1888

THE author supposes that this essay on the
Christian relations of the capitalist and the
workman will be more generally read if it is
presented in narrative form.

It is proper to say that the details bearing on
the business of manufacture have the authority
of a well-known and successful manufacturer of
woollens.

I am myself the person who was invited, in 1873,
by the proprietors of three different woollen mills, to
take them and carry them on, on the plan proposed.
I received these invitations because I had blocked
out this plan, or rather a manufacturer of large ex
perience had blocked it out for me, in a story which
I published at that time in " Harper's Magazine "
called " Back to Back."

Unfortunately for me, I was not trained to the
woollen manufacture, and could not take, therefore,
the difficult part which Mr. Spinner takes in this
book, as Max Rising took it in that. I was there
fore obliged to decline the three proposals. But
in this book, as the reader will see, I have supposed
that Mr. Spinner accepted one.

EDWARD E. HALE.

HOW THEY LIVED IN
HAMPTON

CHAPTER I

HOW THEY LIVED IN HAMPTON

HAMPTON was a little factory town where
was one woollen mill, which represented
an investment of perhaps sixty thousand dollars.
The village was pretty, — a little more four-square
and set in its plan than I should have made it, —
but with evident arrangements of comfort for the
workingmen and workingwomen. Lines of maples,
about twenty years old, or rather less, shaded the
streets, growing perhaps a little too near the fronts
of the houses. The houses were not in blocks.
They were separate from each other, and each
house had the command, if I may so speak, of as
much as an acre of land, as a home garden. I
noticed, as I walked about the village and pushed
my explorations into the back streets, that, in
many instances, the lots connected with back lots,
so that these gardens were considerably more than
an acre. The mill was just off the village street,
built close to the Beaver Brook, which was dammed
up to make the waterfall which provided power.

224 How They Lived in Hampton

A church, a town hall, and a schoolhouse faced
three sides of a little public square, which was
planted with trees and flowers, in the midst of
which there was a fountain. I noticed a stand
for a band on one side of the square.

I had been following Beaver Brook, and what
the geography would call its tributaries, far up
into the woods and hills, and had returned to a
late dinner, with a basket of trout quite as heavy
as I cared to carry. The plan had been that
we were to drive down the valley after dinner,
and see what was to be seen of a certain mound
in the fork of the river and brook, which either
was or was not built by the Aztecs, or by Chip-
pewas, or some other Indian tribes, and regarding
which we were to form an opinion while we spent
a pleasant afternoon. But the appearance in the
west of black clouds, which made a thunder-storm
certain, broke up these plans for a drive, and so I
found myself sitting with Mr. Spinner, my host, on
the broad eastern piazza, with the chance for a long
talk, which business, amusement, or the interrup
tion of guests had not permitted during my visit.

" Now you can tell me," said I, " how you came
here, what you did first, and what you did last,
why you did it, and where you did it, when you
failed, and when you succeeded."

Spinner laughed. *' I am not a story-teller,"
said he, " and I shall be apt to put the cart before
the horse. The story will fail in what the maga
zines call artistic or aesthetic grouping or arrange-

How They Lived in Hampton 225

ment. But if you put me on my hobby, I shall
ride him, and you will have to see his paces."

I said I wanted nothing better.

" I like to tell the story," he said. " I have seen
it all, — I and Nancy here, — and we have been a
good deal of it. But we should not have done
what we have, nor would you see what you see
here, but for the loyal help of the people here ; no,
nor if, on the whole, the country had not been be
hind us. At bottom, John, this is a country of
workingmen. The wealth in the hands of a few
rich men is easily seen and easily talked of. But,
for all that, the amount in the pockets of the People
— the People with a large P, as that man said in
his speech — is vastly more than the amount at the
bank accounts of a few nabobs. Indeed, I often
think of that phrase of Quincy's, that the servant-
girls of Boston owned the palaces on their Back
Bay. He meant that the servant-girls made the
deposits in the savings-banks, which enabled them
to lend to the palace-builders all the money they
wanted.

" So the country sympathizes with industry, with
contrivance, with work. That sympathy shows it
self in law, — well in fashion, though the news
papers do not think so, — in public sentiment.
And this makes, Mr. Freeman, it makes no end of
difference. I would not run a mill in Mexico, —
not if you would give me forty-five ingots of silver
to build into the foundation. Nay ; when I re
member how I heard a Manchester woman from

15

226 How They Lived in Hampton

England once, in a New Hampshire valley, hold
up her hands to heaven and invoke its ' curse on
them that built the chimbleys which shut out God's
light,' from her old home, in the England she had
deserted ; when I heard that, I was glad I was not
making cloth in England. I like to work where I
have * the country behind me/ "

Then Spinner asked me if I remembered where
we had heard that phrase. I did remember it very
well. Captain Greely had given an account, in
tensely exciting, of his Arctic adventures. And he
told us how he encouraged the men by telling
them that they had " the country behind them."

" Well," said Spinner/ as he picked up the thread
of his history, and as little Mary Spinner brought
me a Bartlett pear and a fruit-knife, " to begin at
the beginning, we began when everything was
horribly depressed. I suppose that is a good time
to begin. If the sand and gravel has been swept
off the rock, you have a clean underpinning. You
can build on the rock, and no mistake, and for that
there is good Scripture. It was in the autumn of
1874. I had been the foreman in the dyeing-room
— head-dyer I was called — in the Andalusia Mills,
at Groton. Perhaps you remember how high up
they went," he said, rather grimly, " higher than
a kite. The selling agent knew as much about
wool as I know about quarternions. He chose to
buy our wool, as well as to sell our goods. He
left the business mostly to his sons, who knew more
of billiards than I know of teazles. And the up-

How They Lived in Hampton 227

shot of it all was that there was that first-rate
smash-up. Stockholders and all were mad. An
dalusia Mills were sold under the hammer to some
Germans, and they brought in their own people to
run them, if and when they opened again. So I
and Nancy here, with our two babies, were left out
in the cold.

" Meanwhile the country was drugged or flooded,
or whatever you call it, with every sort of woollen
goods. And it did seem as if the man was a fool
who made any more.

" Just at that time I met at some sort of a com
mittee meeting our old friend Thankful Nourse ;
we were both trustees of a workingman's building
fund. I walked home with Nourse, and, well, yes,
I told him a few bottom truths on the subject of
investment. He had been in the Andalusia, and
now had the pleasure of seeing the same stock
quoted at '35, no buyers/ for which his father had
given two or three hundred a share.

" I told Nourse that it was just what the Scripture
said. He had had his good things, and now he
had his evil things. I told him that if he had
known how to manufacture woollens, and had
chosen to use his knowledge, he would have saved
much of his investment.

" ' Instead of which/ I said, ' you chose to go to
the Islands of Greece, and up the Nile, and across
the desert to Damascus, and you left the business
of manufacturing to some people who knew nothing
about it.' Nourse answered, rather grimly and

228 How They Lived in Hampton

gloomily, that he knew that very well, quite as
well as I did, and that he did not come to have his
memory refreshed.

" ' No/ I said, * I did not mean to annoy you.
But I meant to say this, that there are two different
rates by which capital ought to be paid. One is
the rate by which I am paid for my money when I
do not take care of it, and take no risks. This is a
much lower rate than the rate to be paid me when
I take care of it myself, and when I do take some
risk.'

" * Of course,' Nourse says ; ' every one agrees to
that.'

" Yes, every one agrees to that. But I have
not found that all people agree to what follows.
Yet I think it is clear. It is not very hard, in any
country, to find out about what capital is worth,
say, for idiots or fools of any sort, or for people
who do not want to take care of their money, if
they knew how. It is clear enough that the long
government loans, such loans as the English con
sols, represent the minimum rate of interest An
idiot or his guardian would be sure of his interest.
He takes no care of the investment, but his invest
ment is sure. And I went on to say that while
Nourse was going up the Nile, or was crossing the
desert, or even if he had a paralytic stroke which
lasted seventeen years, the Andalusia people ought
to have paid him at that rate of interest, and
that he had, indeed, in equity, an absolute right
to it.

How They Lived in Hampton 229

" Nourse began to see what I was driving at ;
and he said that if that were all capitalists were to
have, nobody would ever bother to use money for
manufacturing. They would try government
bonds and be done with it. ' And you fellows,'
said he, ' who are now very willing to take our
subscriptions to your stock, would find there was
no money to build the mills with, or to buy the
first bale of wool.'

" I said I knew that; and that I did not mean
to limit them to that. But I said, that for what
followed this minimum rate, they became, to a
certain extent, adventurers. What followed was
something like a second-mortgage bond, — not so
sure in its essence as the first. ' You are entitled,'
I said, ' to what we will call the Idiot Rate, — the
average rate of " Governments," — though the sky
should fall, in bad times or good times. But for
after profit, you must take the chances, just as the
retailer does, who sells you satinets and broad
cloths, — or just as the tailor does, who has pieces
of them on his shelves, and cannot sell them.
When the Andalusia people paid you that swamp
ing dividend of eleven per cent, six or eight years
ago, three per cent or a little more came to you
because it was the worth of the money, and nearly
eight per cent came to you because that was a
good year, and because then you had some intelli
gent people at the fore/

" Nourse growled that it was long since he had
had any such good fortune, — that he was a fool

230 How They Lived in Hampton

not to sell out then, and that he never, he hoped,
should be such a fool again.

" But I went to see him the next day, and we
followed up the conversation. I told him, that
even in the depressed condition of affairs which we
were in, there were as good chances as ever for
going into the business of making woollen cloths.
I said that I did not believe that wearing warm
clothes in winter was going out of fashion.

" Nourse said that the tariff might change, and
England and Germany might undersell us. He
had burned his fingers once, and he would not
burn them again, — and so on and so on.

" As for tariffs, I said that the country would
long want a large revenue, and was used to gather
ing it by import duties. I said that the country
was really governed by its workingmen, and that
they would be slow to injure themselves. And I
said that whether there was a high tariff or not, we
are an ingenious people, and a numerous people;
that the nearer the mill was to the shop on the one
side, and to the man who made the coat on the
other, the better was the chance of the man who
carried on the mill. Anyway, I said, I had been
educated to make woollen cloth, that was my pro
fession, and I did not expect to give it up; that
there were hundreds of thousands of Americans as
good as I, who had been trained to that profession,
and that we had somewhere between forty and fifty
million people about us who were glad to wear the
cloth we had made. He laughed good-naturedly,

How They Lived in Hampton 231

and said he was glad I was in such good heart.
And I reminded him, that however much he had
suffered by the Andalusia, I had suffered more.

"But, indeed, those were black times in our
business. Oh ! I cannot tell you how many mills
shut down, — all the weak ones, — most of the
little ones, — and indeed a good many which no
one would ever have called weak until then. It
happened that I wrote an article about manufactur
ing, in a weekly paper, which attracted the atten
tion of some business men, and from that article it
was that I received, through the editor's hands,
three letters, from three different sets of people,
asking me if I did not want to bring to life three
different broken-winded woollen mills, in three dif
ferent parts of the country. One of them was in
Ohio ; one of them was in Middlesex, in Massa
chusetts ; and the third was a mill here in Hamp
ton. I do not say it was this mill, though here is
the old sluice-way, the old wheel in fact, and in
part the old foundation. But, really, we have
changed almost everything, and the village, as you
see it, is practically new.

" If I do not tire you, or bore you, I will tell
you how it came about."

I said it would not bore me at all ; that, in fact,
I had come to Hampton to find out, if I could, the
secret of their success, and that the more he liked
to tell me, the better I should be pleased. So
Spinner began again.

" I do not pretend that I should have launched

232 How They Lived in Hampton

out into this if the Andalusia had held on. I
had a good salary there, and it was very con
venient and very pleasant to draw my pay with
the rest, to salt down what I wanted, and to let
a strong company behind me take all the risks of
the business. I have never wondered that men
are so eager to go into positions where they have
fixed pay, regularly paid. But the Andalusia had
not held on. It had been blown up ' higher than
a kite.' I had Nancy and the babies in a world
which was full of Thankful Nourses ; I mean, full
of men who were afraid of manufacturing, — that
is, were afraid of the very enterprises on which my
bread and butter and my babies' milk and spoons
depended. That was really the reason why, when
the third of these mills was offered me, I began
to ask myself whether I had not better face the
music ; in fact, whether I must not face the music.
The Ohio letter I had answered right away, with a
civil refusal. But the Middlesex letter and this
Hampton letter came together, by one mail. That
interested me, and made me think something
might be done, and I sent for John Workman, and
asked him to come and see me.

" No. He is not one of the Worcester Work-
mans. That is another family. His father came
from Maine, and afterwards went to Wisconsin.

" I sent for John Workman, and he came to me.
He was out of work, as I knew he was, and I knew
that he would know some of the best hands we
had had at the Andalusia. The depression of all

How They Lived in Hampton 233

business was as hard for them as it was for the
manufacturers. Well, I had much the same talk
with him that I had had with Mr. Nourse, only
now I began, so to speak, at the other end. But
I told Workman that he and I had our chance
now. We had often said that the rate of wages
ought to rise with good times, if it was to fall with
bad times. But I had three mills offered to me
to carry on, and thought I was not without hopes
that I could persuade Nourse to give some sinews
of war. So I said to Workman that if he could
get a lot of men together who were willing to work
at minimum wages, but to be so far partners in the
concern that if times improved their wages should
improve, we had our chance. I told him that the
' bloated capitalists ' were, for once, as badly off
as the men who worked with their brains and with
their hands, and that for once we had a chance to
begin in our own way.

" Now, as I said before, in ordinary times, and
especially in prosperous times, this would have
been mere talk, and nothing more. But Workman
had nothing to do, and he had a family to feed.
He knew several of our best friends, as I have
said ; and they had nothing to do, and they had
their families to feed. He brought two or three
of them to me, and we had long conversations
It ended in my getting more promises from them,
which I was able to carry to Mr. Nourse. They
were willing to take hold with me ; I did not say
on shares exactly, but really it was much the same

234 How They Lived in Hampton

way that the fishermen, or in old days the whalers
at Nantucket, go, or went, for their enterprises.
That is to say, everybody there was to be sure of
his rations as far as anything could be sure; but
for the rest, it all depended upon whether our voy
age were a good one or not. The men wanted to
divide every three months, but I would not agree
to this. I said the voyage must last two years
before there was a division. They were rather a
superior class of men, — they were interested in
the plan. They were all running behindhand, and
drawing on their bank accounts ; and they finally
agreed that our voyage should be a two years'
voyage before we made any dividend. That is to
say, they agreed to just what Nourse agreed to.
All that was to be absolutely promised was a ' star
vation payment/ and the rest was to be part of
the venture.

" Let me say, by the way, that in any such enter
prise you are able to rely on the love of adventure
which exists in all men's hearts. Why, Freeman,
if you thought it was right, you would like to buy
a lottery ticket yourself to-day, and you are really
sorry that you know it is wrong.

" As for me, I was between the two, with Work
man. We two were a sort of buffers, to take all
the pounding. We were to be scolded by both sides,
and have all the responsibility of everybody's fail
ures. We were to be responsible with the present
owners of the mill, whichever way we should take.
We were to make the engagement with Nourse,

How They Lived in Hampton 235

and the engagements with the men. When we
were fairly running, if ever we were fairly running,
I was to buy the wool, and I was to sell the cloth.
I was to make the journeys to New York, and I
was to have money enough in the strong-box
every Saturday night to pay the starvation wages
we had agreed upon, and at the end of every third
month to pay Nourse the * idiot dividend ' on his
capital. Workman was to take the personal over
sight of the manufacture, to turn the raw wool into
woollen. That is to say, we were to be these
hated middle-men whom we had abused so often,
and whom we had heard cursed so often. I did
not much like to be a middle-man; but it was
very clear that Nourse did not mean to run this
mill, but was going off to the Sandwich Islands.
And the people who owned it did not mean to
run it. If they had meant to, they would not
have offered it to me.

" I showed the men's agreement to Nourse, and
I got a half-way promise from him that if I started
such a plan he might put in some money. How
much he would put in, I did not know. But on
the strength of his promise I drew fifty dollars out
of my bank account, and took Workman with me,
and we came down to see this place. I can tell
you that it did not look much as it does now. It
had been badly planned, badly managed, and had
come to grief. A poor broken-winded mill at the
best; and when we saw it, it had no wind at all.
The people had all gone away except an old man

236 How They Lived in Hampton

who was keeper, and who had his machinery, such
as it was, clean and in good order. But it would
evidently take a good deal of money, and I no
longer wondered that the people had written to
me to offer it to me.

" If you care anything about it, I will show you
to-morrow the papers that passed between me and
them, and I should like to show you some photo
graphs which show what it was when we took
hold.

"But, to make a long story short, for Nancy
wants us at tea, it ended in my persuading Nourse
to buy the whole concern, and for the present to
hold the deed. But he took me as partner, and
John Workman as another partner ; and we drew
out our bank accounts, — I had nearly two thou
sand dollars then, and Workman had five or six
hundred, — so that we might be in good faith part
ners with him in co-operation. And it was agreed
that any man who worked in the mill three months
might become a stockholder with us. Indeed,
Nourse agreed to sell out all his stock if we chose.
We were to allow him four per cent a year, as what
we all called in joke the ' idiot's dividend,' which
was to be paid as our first charge after we had
paid what we called ' starvation wages ' and our
other running expenses.

" For the rest, I was to be permitted, for my
salary as manager, to draw six hundred dollars a
year, as the men drew their wages. Workman
was to draw the same. After the end of the

How They Lived in Hampton 237

second year we were to see where we were. That
is to say, the first voyage should then be considered
over. Profits, for we took it for granted there
would be profits, were then to be divided into
three equal parts. Nourse was to have one third ;
Workman and I, as managers, were to have one
third ; and the men were to have one third. Of
course, as fast as they bought out Nourse's stock,
they also became capitalists, and took their earn
ings as such. The scheme would work, however,
if none of them took any of his share.

" However, you had better see all this on paper,
and I will show you the articles of agreement after
Nancy has given you a cup of tea.

" When the papers were finally passed I had
Workman with me, and he brought with him one
of the best of the men who had agreed to try the
new plan at Hampton, whose name was Holmes.
We had gone all over the business pretty carefully,
and I thought Mr. Nourse wanted to get away.
But the other two still lingered, and finally Holmes
broke the silence, and said : —

" ' I wanted to say to you, Mr. Nourse, and I
think Mr. Spinner would like to say the same
thing, that we are not going into this thing as
a mere matter of business. It is a matter of busi
ness, and we will hold to our promise as men of
business. But we like the plan really, and we like
it because it seems to us to be fair all round.
There is a great deal of bad talk — you must
excuse me if I say I think it is on all sides — about

238 How They Lived in Hampton

the relations of what people call labor and capital.
For myself, I never called myself a laborer ; I always
called myself a workman, and I think there is a
difference between work and labor. But that is
neither here nor there. I, for one, do not want to
encourage hard language between men like you,
Mr. Nourse, who have money, and men like me,
who want to do an honest day's work, who expect
to be paid for it, but who do not expect anything
more than our pay. I should think that, if you
will let me say so, was the Christian way of stating
this thing, and though I do not make much pre
tence as a religious man, I am a member of the
church, and I do want to go forward in my every
day work, as I do in what I say on Sunday, on
Christian principles. Now, if you do not think I
am talking too long, — and my wife often tells me
that I do talk too much, — I should like to explain
what I mean by Christian principle.'

" Mr. Nourse said, with a great deal of feeling,
that he was very much obliged to him ; that he
would stay all night to hear what he had to say.
For he said he had made this thing a matter
of prayer himself, and he wanted to know, if he
could, what were the Christian relations which
bound him to the men at work in the establish
ments where he had any interest. He said, very
earnestly, that anybody was unjust to him who
said he merely wanted to screw out of his money
the most that could be got for it; that he had read
and talked and studied, in hope of finding out what

How They Lived in Hampton 239

these same Christian relations were. He would be
very much obliged to Mr. Holmes if he would
take all the time he wanted to state his view
about it.

" Holmes seemed somewhat encouraged by this
declaration* but he said, with a half laugh, that we
should not want to stay till midnight. * Indeed, it
is all in very short language in the New Testament,
where it says we must bear each other's burdens.
It says that no man is to live for himself alone,
and no man is to die for himself alone. For my
part, I do not think I should work a day if I were
not pleased with the thought that I was doing my
share to clothe a man who cannot clothe himself
as well as I can clothe him, — some poor fellow
off in Dakota or catching whales in the Arctic
seas, maybe,' he said, laughing. ' I want to do
my share in the work of this world. It happens
that I have been trained to do this as a weaver.
I call myself a good weaver, and I think I am able
to teach other people something about weaving.
If I did not think so, I should go about something
else; I would not come with Workman to this
mill. But I want to do this as a disciple of Jesus
Christ and a child of God. I want to do it in such
a way that I shall not be ashamed of doing it when
I come to die.

" ' Now, Mr. Nourse and Mr. Spinner both,' he
said, ' this plan of yours is somewhat new in the
way in which you have set it up. It really implies,
as far as I can see, all that I have ever contended

240 How They Lived in Hampton

for when I have made speeches, as I have often
done, in our trade-union meetings. If you will let
me say so, this plan, as Mr. Spinner has drawn it
up, throws our business of manufacturing on very
much the same ground on which most business is
done in America. Men are used to such a union
as I make, and as Workman makes, with Mr.
Spinner and anybody he has with him to carry
on this mill. Men know perfectly well that there
must be a director or manager; there must be
somebody to make plans and somebody to carry
out plans ; and we are not such fools as to suppose
that that somebody is to work without being paid
for it. I am not such a fool as to suppose that he
will know how to do his work without learning
how. We are not, therefore, jealous at all of the
man who directs our industry, who manages the
concern, who says what is profitable and what is
not profitable, and who buys and sells our goods.
If you will think of it, that is exactly what is done
in every wholesale store or retail shop. There is
a man who buys my groceries, for instance ; he
knows where to buy them and how to buy them
cheaply, and, although he sells them to me for
half as much again as he gave for them, I do not
quarrel with him. It is a convenience for me to
buy a pound of sugar instead of buying a barrel
of sugar, and I do not quarrel with the man who
gives me that convenience. But, behind the grocer,
there is a bank, which lends him money and pro
vides him with the capital which he is going to

How They Lived in Hampton 241

use. Now here, Mr. Nourse, I am not sure that
you would agree with me, but I am telling you the
average opinion of American workmen about the
relationship of that bank to that grocer. They
say that the bank provides him with capital at
certain rates, which do not vary very much from
time to time. There was once a time when they
were even fixed by law at six per cent, or there
abouts. No one says that was wise, and I suppose
it was not wise. Still, this is certain : those rates
do not go up and down in exact correspondence
with the ups and downs of business. When my
grocer has very little custom he does not find that
the banks lend him money any more readily because
he wants it more. In fact, he does not tell the
bank very accurately what the state of his business
is ; they do not ask him very carefully. They are
careful to know if his credit is good, — that he
does not press them too hard, — and if he is safe
they lend him money.

" ' I say that is the relationship in which people
are in the habit of using capital in America. That
is exactly the relationship which you have estab
lished with us in this contract you have made.
Please to observe, then, that it is the arrangement
which we are used to. It is the arrangement which
we see succeeds in other forms of business. That
is the reason why we like it better than an arrange
ment in which, if business happened to be very
prosperous, if sales were very quick, and our goods
particularly in demand, the capitalist should make

16

242 How They Lived in Hampton

the usual profit on that account, while our wages
would rise but slowly, if they rose at all.

" * I think Mr. Spinner said that we are not
above liking the excitement of good times, and
we are men enough to take the pressure of bad
times. Here is the reason why we are willing to
share and share.

" ' Beyond that, I should like to assure you, Mr.
Nourse, who seem to represent capital in this con
versation, and you, Mr. Spinner, who seem to rep
resent skill in manufacturing and in trade, — I
should like to assure you both that we shall like
this plan, not simply because we think we are
going to have more money in our pockets at the
end of two years, but because it seems to us exactly
fair. It seems to us that now we bear your burdens,
and, if you will let me say so, that you bear ours.
When I go to church, I am apt to hear a good
deal of this talked about. And I find that I am
very apt to get thinking that this is the practical
side of the Christian religion ; and if we can only
succeed here on our part, and you on your part,
in keeping this in mind, why, we shall be working
out the Christian relations of capital to workmen.
It will not be a great while, as it seems to me,
before we cease talking about your part and our
part, and shall feel that we are all engaged in one
concern. This I can assure you of, — that under
such a plan as this, you are certain to have picked
workmen and workwomen. I do not know how
much you have thought of it, but it is a great

How They Lived in Hampton 243

thing to have a contented set of people. It is not
a bad thing to have a set of men who know they
are trying an experiment, and I can promise you
that while there is any hope that this experiment
will succeed, the workmen, whom I do not choose
to call laborers, will meet you gentlemen half way,
as you have met us.' "

Such were Mr. Holmes's views as to the " Chris
tian relations between capital and labor."

CHAPTER II

THE PLAN

THE arrangements by which the Hampton
Mills were set running were, indeed, sub
stantially those on which they have been run from
that day to this day. An act of incorporation was
taken out, on the principle of limited liability, under
the general corporation law of that State. This act
originated, as all similar legislation in the world
originated, in the act framed by Mr. Theodore
Hinsdale in Connecticut, in the year 1837. It
was an act and he a man to be celebrated and
honored by all who believe in Christian Co-opera
tion, and think that the law should sustain and
protect all who wish to bear each other's burdens.
I will not print the act of incorporation here;
for I shall make the plan more intelligible by copy
ing the original agreement, as it was drawn up by
Nourse, Spinner, and Workman. Eventually, Spin
ner and Workman printed this agreement, and kept
copies of it in the office, to give away to people
like me, who came to see the operation of the
mills.

The Plan 245

HAMPTON WOOLLEN MILL.

Thankful Nourse of Arcadia, John Workman of Hope-
dale, and William Spinner of Crastis agree to form a cor
poration for the re-establishment of the Hampton Woollen
Mills in the town of Hampton. This agreement is to last
for five years, and afterwards, until one of these three
parties expresses a wish to withdraw, when the partner
ship shall be dissolved, and the corporation, at the end of
one year's notice given by the dissatisfied partner.

[In fact, neither of them wished to withdraw at the end
of five years. And a private agreement by which they
were bound to each other to consent to such withdrawal
was, at the end of five years, cancelled by the three.
Either of them now has the right to sell his stock, and
on the death of either of the managing partners, the sur
viving shareholders would choose his successor.]

1. Thankful Nourse, for himself, his heirs, and repre
sentatives, agrees to furnish as required seventy-two
thousand five hundred dollars for the purchase and re
pairs of the property known as the Hampton Mills, and
for carrying on the manufacture of woollen cloth under
the management of the said Workman and Spinner,
already named.

2. John Workman, of the second part, agrees to furnish
five hundred dollars for the same purpose.

3. William Spinner, of the third part, agrees to furnish
two thousand dollars for the same purpose.

The sum of seventy-five thousand dollars thus con
tributed is to be the capital stock of the enterprise, and
when capital is spoken of in this agreement, the sum now
named, of seventy-five thousand dollars, is meant

John Workman and William Spinner, of the second

246 How They Lived in Hampton

and third part of this agreement, agree to give all their
time and skill to the manufacture of woollen goods at the
said Hampton Mills ; — they are to choose the workmen
and appoint the foremen, and direct the manufacture.
They are to buy the wool and other necessary material ;
they are to sell the manufactured goods for the best ad
vantage of the concern. Acting as the firm of " Spinner
& Workman," they are to have the control of the mill
as entirely as if they had leased it from the corporation.
They do this for the benefit of all parties concerned, as is
hereinafter described.

It is understood and covenanted that the mill is to be
carried on with the intention that the profits are to be
divided between the owners, the two managers, and the
workmen employed by them — that one third of the
profits shall be paid to the owners, one third to the
managers, and one third to the workmen.

In the estimate of profits for such division, it is agreed
that there shall have been first paid as necessary ex
penses, —

1. Four per cent on the sum of $75,000 to the owners.

2. Six hundred dollars a year to each manager.

3. To each workman as may be agreed with him, but
on a scale of wages intended to represent three fourths of
the current rate of wages in his line.

4. If the mills do not earn four per cent, after paying
the other expenses, the owners shall receive only the
amount which it does earn.

It is further agreed between the said Thankful Nourse
of the first part and the said Spinner and Workman of the
second and third parts of this agreement, that, for the
needs of the mill in carrying forward this enterprise, if
said Spinner and Workman find it necessary to give their

The Plan 247

notes for discount at any time, the said Thankful Nourse,
or his agents for him, will indorse those notes to the
amount of thirty thousand dollars and no more. And the
said Spinner and Workman shall have no power to contract
other debts chargeable to the corporation, except for ad
vances on goods manufactured. The accounts of the firm
and of the corporation shall be accurately kept, and at all
times open to examination by either of these parties or by
any stockholder or any person commissioned by one third
of the workmen in the mill, who are to be regarded as
having the rights of partners in the concern.

A balance-sheet shall be prepared at the end of every
half-year to show the profit or loss of the mills in the last
six months.

If any balance of profit appears, after the expenses
above provided for have been met, the owners represent
ing capital as above described shall receive two per cent
semi-annually on their stock invested.

The remaining profits shall be credited in three equal
portions, but shall not be drawn for division till the end of
two years.

One third shall be paid to capital as above described.

One third shall be paid to the managers.

One third shall be paid to the workmen, — to be
divided in the proportion of the wages which they have
already received. In the event of the death of any work
man, or of his leaving the mill, his representative in
Hampton shall receive his share of the profits, as if he
remained in the employ of the corporation.

At the end of five years the mills shall be sold for the
benefit of all concerned, and the profit, if any, shall be
divided among all concerned, on the same basis as that
described for the division of the semi-annual profits.

248 How They Lived in Hampton

[At the end of five years the enterprise was so success
ful that this part of the agreement was cancelled by all
concerned.]

The part of the transaction which Spinner knew
was difficult, and which Nourse thought was im
possible, was the persuading a sufficient number
of workmen to take hold on such terms as those
described. But John Workman had always, after
he had once enlisted, felt sure that that part could
be brought about. He belonged, in particular, to
a workingmen's club which had often discussed
such subjects. The men were good fellows, who
did not believe that " the other fellow " in a bargain
was to have nothing. They had loyally tried to
work out the question of wages on the same plan,
which should not involve " knocking down and
dragging out." Here was a plan with money be
hind it. On the other hand there was nothing.
The Andalusia, where most of them had worked,
was bankrupt. Men were really trudging about on
foot, seeking chances as weavers and dyers, and
there were no such chances.

What was offered was almost starvation wages,
but there was no sham about it. And every man
was sure of a chance for success. Every man was
compelled to invest for two years the remaining
quarter of his income, which was not paid him.

Workman was able to offer his tenement-houses
at fabulously low rates, for the new company
bought them with the rest of the abandoned prop-

The Plan 249

erty. And, from the beginning, Workman and
Spinner agreed that the money of the company
was to be made in manufacturing. It was not to
be made out of rents or stores or the improvement
of real estate in Hampton. The tenement-houses
were valued at an appraisement, and stood at very
low charge on the books. Workman said, there
fore, that he would rent them for four per cent, —
what had been called in joke " the idiot's dividend,"
and nothing more. This gave each hand a con
siderable advantage at the first, because he was a
partner very soon, even at " starvation wages. "
The men began to buy their houses from the cor
poration on low rates and terms which will appear
in another chapter.

Among Workman's friends there were several
enthusiasts, each of whom undertook to engage ten
or twelve hands in the departments needed. Much
discussion pro and con went forward. At the last
there was much shrinking of wives from the pro
posed removal. On the other hand, there were
some people who had been wrecked in the original
failure at Hampton. They were all too eager to
take hold, if in any way they might. Some ofthem
proved very good people for the purpose. Most of
them were the people who would not have suc
ceeded anywhere. By such means the hands were
got together, and the mill began to convert wool
into woollens.

CHAPTER III

THE RESULTS

SUCH was the history of the new start of
Hampton, and the plan on which the several
adventures were formed. It is clear enough that
if they had not been bound together by other ties
than those of mere business, as it is called, the
enterprise would never have succeeded as it did, —
indeed, it would never have been. But they were
united more closely. Every one of the leaders be
lieved that, in the true order of society, — the order
which the Saviour of man lived and died to estab
lish, — there was a right way to do whatever the
world needed done. They believed, therefore,
that there was a right way to make woollen cloth,
if only they could find out what it was. They
meant to find it out ; they were not afraid to ask
God's blessing on that endeavor, nor to say to each
otheu that they had asked it. With notions and aims
as high as these, Mr. Spinner had carried his plan,
not now conceived for the first time, to Mr. Nourse.
He, too, had made the whole subject a matter
of most serious inquiry. He had no wish to grow
rich from the results of other men's industry, unless
they, in their places, had a chance to prosper also.
He knew, however, that manufacturing enterprise

The Results 251

or mercantile adventure have their laws, as abso
lute as those of rainfall or of tide-waves. He knew
that, as he could not overpower those laws, more
than King Canute could resist the flowing sea,
whatever his wealth and power, he could not, on
the other hand, withstand them by any degree of
sentiment or tenderness. He knew that the laws
of trade and of social order must be studied, and
that allowance must be made for them. Mr.
Workman, and Mr. Spinner as well, wanted to see
the right thing done. They were both as proud
that they were not born with silver spoons in their
mouths as was ever any prince that he was cradled
in purple. They were in no sort beggars for a
change of position. They were workmen, and
good workmen; they had been trained to their
craft, and knew how to do their work. What they
wanted was, that the share which they contributed
in the clothing of the world should be as cordially
recognized as every other man's share. They
knew that many others had a share in it, — capital
ist, wool-grower, transporter, merchant, tailor, and
stitching-girl. They believed that a fair division
could be made somehow, which should recognize
how much each of these parties fairly earned and
deserved to have. This they wanted for them
selves and their associates. They asked for no
more. But they were satisfied with nothing less.
Had any one asked either of these men for charity,
he would have received what he asked for promptly.
For they all understood what the word " charity "

252 How They Lived in Hampton

means, and acknowledged the obligation it de
scribes. But all of them knew that the relations
between capital, which provided tools and mate
rials and work, which uses tools to manufacture
materials, should not be relations of sentiment, or
of charity or of force. They should be relations
founded on the eternal laws of God. And, as all
of them were Christian men, they believed that
these laws were revealed in the Gospel.

Recognizing, then, that for making woollen
cloth, and bringing it to a fit market, three co
adjutors were necessary, — capital, work, and
the directing skill which should enable capital to
use the workman's industry, — they agreed that
these three agencies should share equally in the
profit of the article produced. The reader has
seen the simple plan which they adopted.

It worked better than they had dared to hope.
For the first seven months, indeed, after the
machinery had been renewed, the mills repaired,
and the new system set going, they had uphill
work. The market was flooded with the stock of
bankrupt concerns, forced upon buyers by the as
signees and creditors. Never, Spinner told me,
had prices sunk so low, and never had the world
looked so blackly on such adventure. But he had
never given up his conviction that the world must
have warm clothing, — at least in the zones which
were north of ten degrees of Northern Latitude.
He kept on making cloth, — better and better, he
said, — as he was able to test his machinery and to

The Results 253

train his hands, without overworking them. He
knew, he said, to a quarter of a cent, what his
cloth cost him. He was not yet obliged to sell a
yard beneath that cost. He did sell a little at a
very small advance upon it. And he piled up
a good deal, waiting for a rise. After seven
months, the flood came. It wavered at first, and
then poured in, cheerfully and hopefully. Some
jobbers, who had taken a little of his cloth on com
mission, had received very flattering orders for
more, amounting almost to carte-blanche for price ;
so sound had the goods proved, and so well had
the tailors been pleased who had used them. He
was glad that he had insisted that the voyage
should be a two years' voyage. But he began
now to post very encouraging bulletins on his
news-boards. He would not make goods by
caucus, he said. But he did mean that men and
boys should know which way the stream was run
ning which carried the fortunes of them all.

He had, therefore, a regular habit of placing on
his bulletin board such correspondence or other
news as he thought the hands would be glad to
read. I saved one or two of the old bulletins
which he gave to me.

No. 23.

" Extract from a letter from New York : — From Mer
cer and Goodenoagh, this despatch is just received :
Sold all A. A. at four eighths advance. Order for twice
as much."

254 How They Lived in Hampton

For a considerable time after the mill began to
run, they felt the worth of the new power enlisted.
People were living very economically, because they
had only three quarters of the wages they were
used to. But every one of these same people had
been living more economically, because they had
no wages. That was undoubtedly a good stepping-
stone for the new plan. After the beginning, how
ever, there came a period of terrible depression of
feeling. The absolute failure to sell any goods re
acted on the men employed. They were used to
receiving their pay without any great thought of
the run of trade which supplied it. But to meet
Mr. Spinner when he came back from New York,
or to hear him talk, if he would talk, after he had
received his mail, and to know that absolutely no
money had come into the concern, — this dismayed
men who knew, of course, that the thing could not
run on forever on Mr. Nourse's original investment.
They felt the reflection of the depression in the
market, more, probably, than he would have done.
This was the real " Slough of Despond " of the
enterprise. Spinner spoke to me of it, and de
scribed it with a sort of shudder. And afterward
Holmes and Dyer and Sheridan and Workman —
indeed, all of the older hands with whom I talked
— spoke of it, and with bated breath, as if they
hoped they might never have to go through such
an experience again.

"But this I have noticed, Mr. Freeman," said
Holmes to me, " unless a man pulls through his

The Results 255

Slough of Despond in any undertaking, he is no
good. And I say that a woollen mill must live the
life of a man. Anyhow, we went through it. It was
a good lesson for every one of us who was in it.

" We had a revival meeting, if you will let me
call it so, about when things were at their worst.
No, I do not mean what I suppose you might call
a religious revival, but there was a good deal of
religion in it, and, if there had not been, you and
I would not be talking here. Almost all the
leaders spoke. These gentlemen you know, all
spoke. And they put it to the hands, as you
might speak to the. men in a sinking ship, if you
were encouraging them to pump. But they put it
man-fashion. They made the simplest wool-picker
there understand that if he deserted the ship he was
playing false to every man and every woman in the
land who was hoping for better times, better wages,
and a better system. I know I told the men to go
home and pray God to help to carry it through.
I know I took my own advice, and I think others did.

" That meeting was the crisis. One or two fel
lows left us, — ' for their country's good.' But
there was no grumbling after that, and even the
work of the mill seemed to be better, and I know
Workman said the same thing. It was some weeks
before the business situation of the country seemed
better. But we felt better as soon as we openly
recognized the difficulty we were in, — well, and,
so to speak, pledged ourselves to each other. Up
to that time, we had all been prophesying success,

256 How They Lived in Hampton

— ' smooth things,' as I said last night. When
that meeting came, we owned that the whole voy
age was not a summer sail, and that every man
had got to put his shoulder to the wheel, if we
were to go through, — yes, and to pray God to
help him. That is the reason why I say that we
never really prospered till we had gone through
the ' Slough of Despond/ "

It was not the Slough of Despond, but the
reason of the thing, which induced Spinner and
Workman, with Mr. Nourse's approval, to yield
from the rigor of the original plan, which had
demanded what Spinner had called " a two years'
voyage." At the end of the first quarter of the
second year the thing was well established, and in
working order. Spinner had a large offer made
him in New York for all the goods he had been
piling up, and, though the market was probably
still to rise, he determined not to bet on the pos
sibility, but sold out for cash, so as to clear all his
warehouses. And Spinner said to me that, on the
whole, in his administration, he had gone on the
principle that they were manufacturers and not
speculators. " If I could sell our goods for what
it cost us to make them, with a fair profit, and a
fair margin to cover the losses on sales I was some
times forced to make, because I needed money, —
why, I thought I had better sell. I do not mean
I had no right to hold on. Probably I had such
a right. But I do not think the right is the same,
when I am the manager, as I am here, for a hun-

The Results 257

dred or two people who are joint owners in the
goods, as it would be, say, were I the owner of
the Andalusia, and owned all the goods myself.
Now I am a trustee. Then I should be an owner."

I took to heart what he said. And as I looked
over his books one day, I could see the advantages
the concern had derived from his rule. It need
not be said that the public gained a similar advan
tage. It is undoubtedly for the advantage of the
public that prices should not change by sudden
leaps, and that the movements of trade shall not
be affected by what are rightly called speculative
plans. The co-operators of Hampton did not, I
suppose, consider this advantage in making up
their system. But it was one of the many points
in which they builded better than they knew.

Acting upon this policy, Mr. Spinner emptied
his storehouses, and as he sold for cash on very
short credit, he had money in hand. Why should
the first voyage be a two years' voyage? They
were already in port. He was able to declare his
first dividend. Probably no person but himself
and Workman had believed it would come out so
well. They had made few losses, — nothing, in
deed, of considerable account. And when the
shares came to be divided among all hands it
proved that, though so late a payment, it was large
enough to compensate every one for the waiting.

"My deary," said the old woman who washed
the windows, when Spinner paid her first money-
dividend to her, " if I had had the money, I should

17

258 How They Lived in Hampton

have spent it." And her simple confession was
doubtless true with a great many more of these
shareholders, whose investment in work had been
larger than hers.

From that time till the period of my visit the
quarterly balance-sheet had been printed for the
use of the workmen. It was theirs as much as it
was Mr. Nourse's. They were his partners and
knew they were, and by no sentimental statement
merely. Gradually they came to use the language
of owners : " We shall do this ; " " We shall do
that; " " We made a mistake in running so long
on such a pattern ; " " We made a good thing of
this." From the beginning they felt the need of
avoiding waste. " There is not a mill on this
stream but uses twice as much oil as I do ; " that
was the boast which a young man made to me
who met the requisitions of the different rooms for
the oil of their machinery.

Spinner and Workman, in giving me the
accounts which I have digested in these chapters,
both spoke as if they were going back to a time
far distant. In point of fact, the establishment at
Hampton was made only seven years before. But
they had seen so rapid a development since their
original timid plans, that they found it difficult
sometimes to carry themselves to those antedilu
vian days. More than once Spinner came to me,
after he had narrated something, to say that, on
recurring to his notes or his memory, he found
that he had antedated or postdated occurrences,

The Results 259

and that he wanted to correct his original state
ment; for they both knew that I was making
memoranda, and that I wished to draw up some
such statement as I am making now.

At the time I visited them the whole establish
ment was running on as steadily as any manu
facturing town in the country. A considerable
part of Thankful Nourse's share in the capital had
been taken off his hands by purchase from differ
ent heads of rooms, and, in one or two instances, by
the widows of former workmen, who wished to re
main in the place themselves, and liked to feel that
they owned a part of the plant. " Corporation is
co-operation " — this was a favorite saw of Spinner,
Workman, and of a man named Holmes, of whom I
have spoken, and shall have occasion to speak again.

I copy one of their balance-sheets to show
its form.

No. 37
Hampton Mills Balance-Sheet for Six Months.

CR.

By sales of manufactured goods, after commis
sions and expenses have been deducted . $167,892.11

DR.

To amount work of operatives . $15,297.14

To amount paid salaries, Work
man and Spinner .... 300.00

For repairs (machinery and mill) . 6,981.12

Wool and supplies 111,291.14

Interest paid to Thankful Nourse,
Esq., and to Workman and
Spinner 1,500.00

Balance of profit to be divided . 38,522.71

$167,982.11

260 How They Lived in Hampton

At the very beginning, the works had gone
through their share of the difficulties of a begin
ning. After that Slough of Despond which has
been described to the reader, there had come
along heavy depression of business, which had
very severely tried the temper of all these men,
and which they thought might try the sympathies
and steadiness of their friend Thankful Nourse. I
believe, myself, that they quite misapprehended
him in this impression. I did not say so to them,
but I am quite willing to say here, that I think
Mr. Nourse had had quite too much experience in
business to suppose that there were to be years of
plenty without years of famine following them. I
do not believe that in New Zealand, or Boothia
Felix, or Novgorod, or the Malayan Islands, or
wherever his wandering disposition had carried
him, he gave one anxious thought to the invest
ment he had made at Hampton. I suppose that,
like most other capitalists who have their passions
under control, — or, why should I not say frankly,
who are religious men ? — he was willing to take
the better and the worse together, and to submit
with modesty and with loyalty to what he would
frankly have called the " providence of God." I
knew Nourse at one time very well, and I remem
ber that one of his favorite axioms, borrowed from
Mr. Carlyle, was, " There was no act of Parliament
that I should be happy." And he would apply
this axiom in a dozen different ways. He would
say, there was no act of Parliament that the Anda-

The Results 261

lusia should declare ten per cent; there was no
act of Parliament that Mr. Hayes should receive
two thirds of the votes for President ; there was no
act of Parliament that the Britannia should arrive
after a nine days' passage. In other words, he was
willing to live in God's world, subject to some
orders besides his own, and was not in the habit
of complaining, because in any one year or two
years things did not turn out as he would have
them turn out.

He had not said so to Spinner in his negotia
tions with Spinner, but all the same he had not
come to the determination to invest in this tri
partite arrangement without solitary thought and
without prayer. He believed that he had done
the right thing in investing his money as he had
done, although he had done a thing wholly new.
Having come to this determination, having asked
God's help in making this determination, he held
to this determination. If anybody had spoken
to him about it, he would have been seriously
annoyed; but, if it were a person to whom he
thought he must make an answer, — as, for in
stance, to his wife, possibly to an old friend like
me, — he would have said, probably, " I have put
my hand to the plough, and I do not propose to
turn back."

He would have meant that he regarded the cap
ital given to him as given to him in trust to use for
the best purposes. He had tried to use it for the
best purposes when he made this disposal of it,

262 How They Lived in Hampton

and he would not worry himself, week by week,
or month by month, or even year by year, in at
tending to the details. He would not dig up the
tree which he had intentionally planted for a cer
tain purpose in his lawn, because at the end of the
second year or the third year he thought that the
tree was not rooting itself properly.

So much for the difficulties of the enterprise as
they affected capital. They were not so great as
Spinner and Workman fancied they were. To
neither Spinner nor Workman could Mr. Nourse
say all I did, nor were they accustomed to look at
it from the point of view which is, I am sure, the
true one.

In another chapter I will show more at length
than is worth while here the experiences these
two gentlemen themselves had. They were occu
pying a position which appeared to be somewhat
new. They were subject to a great deal of criti
cism from the men whom they were a little apt to
call " sea-lawyers," although they had never been
to sea. They borrowed this phrase from the sailors
whom they knew very well in earlier life, who use
it as an expression of contempt, by which they
describe the men who are forever inciting sailors
to mutinous or disrespectful thoughts of their
employers while they are not themselves good sea
men. There are such men in all industries, whether
they go to sea or not I have no doubt that Spin
ner and Workman both despised them, but still
such critics had it in their power to make them

The Results 263

very unhappy. Such critics were constantly try
ing to make the hands think that Workman and
Spinner overestimated themselves, — took airs upon
themselves, — and, when dividends were made, took
more than they had earned. The phrase, which
Spinner had himself used when he said that he was
to be a buffer between two cars and, if he could,
ameliorate the shock, seemed a very pat one to
describe the misfortunes which belong to the
midway position. Workman said to me one day,
half laughing, that he thought they would have
fared far better if there had been an old estab
lished name by which they could be called. In
point of fact, they were called " managers " of the
mill, and the dividend paid to them was the divi
dend paid to " management." He showed me a
little treatise on the subject, written by I do not
know whom, which said that in France the man
would be called the entrepreneur > meaning the per
son who took hold between one end and the other.
We have the same root in our word " enterprise,"
and Workman said he was tempted to call himself
an " enterpriser," and he wished that somebody
had invented such a word two hundred years ago.
He said, if it could be understood when they were
spoken of, that the whole thing existed because
they were there, it would be better for them both,
and he felt that if some good word could express
this every time they were spoken of it would be a
good thing. " Now," he said, " the word ' man
ager ' has in itself not a bad sound, but when we

264 How They Lived in Hampton

speak of managing a thing, we sometimes imply
that we are managing it in an underhand way. It is
not always so. I believe nobody thinks the ' man
ager ' of a theatre is necessarily a mean man ; but
the moment we speak of a ' political manager,' we
have the idea of a trick. I could wish, therefore/'
he said, " that we were not called the management,
but we are, and we have to bear our burden as
well as we can."

Nor were the workmen free from their share of
annoyances. On the whole, the body corporate
of Hampton sloughed off the inferior and dissatis
fied people. The management was strong enough,
and their friends were strong enough, to say squarely
to the sea-lawyers and other such, that if they did
not like to stay at Hampton there was no act of
Parliament by which they need stay there.

They could be dismissed, at very short notice,
from the mills ; and I was amused to find that this
democratic management was very much more
peremptory in such dismissals than were the direct
ors of many a manufacturing establishment which
I had seen before, who were, to a large extent,
afraid of irritating or wounding the feelings of their
hands. There was no reason for any such fear in
this case, because the hands were, practically, with
the management, the directors of the whole con
cern. On the whole, as I say, the hands were
loyal to the plan. They were more and more
interested in the plan. It cultivated their self-
respect, and, as the reader has been told, it proved

The Results 265

profitable to them. But none the less were they
subject to invasions from committees of inspection
and committees of various delegates from county
conventions, from " Federations of Toilers," from
" Organizations of Industry," from " Unions of
Handicraft," and from various other organizations
which had much more picturesque and mediaeval
names. And these delegates either had some
" wrong," showing that they were offended by
the somewhat independent attitude of Hamp
ton, or they had some new plan for the coming
of the kingdom of heaven which they wanted
to propose to the Hampton workmen. Now
the Hampton workmen were, in fact, the most
democratic set of people in the world. They
were not proud, they appreciated good-fellowship
and camaraderie as much as any men did; but
they were beginning to own their own mill, they
did have a third part of the profits of it, they
wanted it to succeed, and they wanted it to succeed
in their own way. They disliked to be lectured
about the conduct of their business as much as
any purse-proud capitalist in Lynn or in German-
town dislikes to be lectured about his. Still it was
not a nice thing, it was not an agreeable thing, to
be placarded in all the workmen's journals of the
country as being only a mitigated set of scabs,
or as being pretenders in wolves' clothing, or
as being people who, having got a snug thing
themselves, were trying to kick down the ladder
by which they had risen. All the same, they had

266 How They Lived in Hampton

this burden to bear ; and it was among the diffi
culties of the earlier days at Hampton.

It is better to speak of all those difficulties to
gether, than to attempt to convey, in any historical
narrative, the way in which they played in with
each other, antagonized each other, and at the
same time corrected each other. Gradually every
body, probably, came to feel that, to borrow Mr.
Nourse's maxim, there was no act of Parliament
that Hampton should go on without its rubs and
periods of starvation. On the whole, it had be
come more and more a fixed institution, with its
own traditions, — and that is a matter of great im
portance, — with its own habits, which sprung
from these traditions, and with that success which
belongs alike to established traditions and estab
lished habits.

To sum up, under a few general heads, the more
remarkable of these successes, I think I should
say, first of all, that the system had brought in and
kept in a very superior set of workmen and work
women. There were not so many women engaged
as there would generally have been in a mill of the
size, and, as will be seen in another chapter, there
were very few children engaged. But I knew
enough of the woollen manufacture to know that
the intelligence, quickness, promptness, and effec
tiveness of the slowest and poorest hands in any
room was well up to the standard of the better half
of the workmen or workwomen who would have
been engaged in the same room in an ordinary es-

The Results 267

tablishment. I spoke to Spinner about this, and he
said I was certainly right. He said he had thought
of it a great deal ; he at one time tried to put in
figures some statement of the advantage which they
derived from the clear and undoubted superiority of
their work-people. He had not found it possible
to make any tabular or distinctive statement. " But
it amounts to this," he said : " they are all deter
mined that this thing shall succeed ; they are deter
mined the cloth shall be good, and shall maintain
the reputation that it has in the market. If there
is any new style, if there is a bit of new machinery,
if there is a new fad about dyeing, — no matter
what it is, it is a thing that interests them as much
as a new baby interests the people in the house
where it was born. They pet the baby and cuddle
it and do everything they can to make the new plan
prove satisfactory." In the long run, this is evi
dently so. I am disposed to think it springs from
self-respect quite as much as from self-interest,
to which it might ordinarily be ascribed, and
is of great value in any work. And when you
come to any change, — when one of the heads
of a room, for instance, finds it for his advantage
to take a higher place in some other mill, when
you want to promote somebody to the vacant
position, you find that the people who have been
faithful in few things are really able to be masters
of many things, and that you can promote them
without difficulty, and without injury to the run
ning of your organism.

268 How They Lived in Hampton

I am not quite sure whether I am right, but the
saving of material proved also to be very consider
able. Even in such a detail as this of oil, which is
a very considerable charge in a woollen mill, the
young men who had the care of the oil-room were
so careful that, very early in the affair, Workman
and Spinner found that these fellows had driven
up the others to care, amounting almost to parsi
mony, indeed, which involved very considerable
reduction. Among the papers which I brought
away, as memorials of my visit, is a little printed
bulletin, numbered 13, which is a boast that, in the
four weeks preceding, seventy-three gallons of oil
had been saved compared with the expenditure in
the corresponding four weeks in the preceding
year. In the reduction of the amount of wool
used, Workman himself acknowledged to me that
he had been surprised. They told me that, at the
beginning, it was not infrequent to find that, with
the same number of yards completed, one per cent
of wool had been saved in a single week. Of
course such improvement as this could not go
on forever. But it hardly ever happened that the
hands relaxed the care to which they were trained,
partly by self-interest, partly by loyalty, and partly
indeed by pride. They entered into the feeling of
an old-fashioned housekeeper, who hates to see
things thrown away. She even wants her children
to eat after their hunger is satisfied, because she
does not like to have anything left on the plate.
Everybody in every department of these mills had

The Results 269

that same unwillingness to see anything lost which
might have been made useful. In another chapter, I
will describe at some length the pride which I found
all the leaders of the system taking in the young
life of their village. Seven years had changed the
boys and girls of ten into young men and women
of seventeen, — the most miraculous change which
takes place in human life. It required no hint
from those who were most interested, to make me
see that these young men and maidens were people
of a type quite different from the young people of
their age whom one would find in a manufacturing
town, where everything had been neglected, and
where no central power was trying to bring out the
very best training for the young, and to surround
them with the most cheerful and happy influences.
Without going further into such details, it may
be said that nothing is so successful as success.
The financial success of Hampton appears to me,
now that I am looking back upon the whole, as the
least interesting and the least important feature in
its administration and in its history. I shall hardly
be believed, but I think that four out of five, nay,
perhaps that all of the leading members of the
community would say, that they have ceased to
think of the financial success as being the first
matter which they considered. They found them
selves in a place where there was no longer any
irritation in the discharge of their daily duty.
Everybody knew he was justly treated. There was
no longer that angry question why things were

270 How They Lived in Hampton

not otherwise, which, under other circumstances,
would have embittered the first waking at morn
ing, would have embittered every morsel of food,
would have embittered the hour when he retired
to bed at night. This was all gone. Whether
the thing succeeded or not, the thing was fair,
and this sense of fairness gave an evenness to
people's lives which the older members of the
community knew how to value. Next to this, I
should say that there was a certain enlargement
of life, which they could hardly define them
selves, perhaps, and perhaps did not compare with
the somewhat limited range of the life of people
who were taking care of themselves and taking
care of none beside. These people were living,
not a mere personal life, but in the life of the com
munity. They had all common interests, and
these interests were really large interests. To be
taken out of themselves, to be thinking of some
thing better than their own headaches and heart
aches, — this was in itself an advantage which,
whether they knew how to state it in words or not,
affected every hour of every day.

The great essential of all society is, that the lines
of promotion be kept open. A man can bear even
a very hard life, if he has reason to think that next
week something is going to open before him which
will enable him to throw off this or that discomfort
of to-day. On the other hand, a man will chafe in
a very prosperous life, if you tell him that, by any
fatality, he must live on with that machinery, in

The Results 271

that habit, eating that food, and doing that work
forever. Open promotion is the central word for
American society and American life. This open
promotion was the privilege of every man and
woman, boy and girl, in Hampton. It might not
come very soon, but every one knew that it was
ready and possible. It will be shown in another
chapter that the boys and girls were by no means
chained or constrained to a future in which they
should be operatives in a woollen factory, their life
long. Already there were instances where the
young people who had this taste or that gift, lead
ing them into other occupations, had followed
those tastes or used those gifts. Nobody felt com
pelled, by the law of the instrument, to accept one
position or another. There was, on the other
hand, that openness of choice which seems to be
the requisite of any happy life.

This is a poor enough statement of details, and
a poor enough effort to analyze the prosperity of
a successful community. Perhaps it would have
been as well to say that these people had, on
the whole, tried to meet the duties which came to
them, as Christian men and women. They had
done their best, on the whole, to carry out the
Christian law of love ; they certainly were living
daily with the loyal hope that the future was to be
even better than the present; and this love and
this faith were based on an abiding faith in God,
whose law they were trying to obey. I am not
sure that I heard any man say so while I was in

272 How They Lived in Hampton

Hampton, but when I look back upon their life, or
what pleased people to call their experiment, it
does not seem to me that that experiment was so
hazardous, for I always remember who said that, if
any community of brethren would trust first the
kingdom of God and his righteousness, all the
little things of time, for which petty men are sel
fishly anxious, will certainly be added to the
endeavor of that community.

CHAPTER IV

THE STORE

I DID not like to hang about the counting-room
for an unreasonable length of time, and yet I
was so much interested in what I saw at Hampton
that I did not abridge my visit. As I have in
timated, I could occupy myself in the woods and
by the brooks, but I also found that I became
acquainted among the workmen and their wives
and children; and bearing in mind all along the
object of my visit, I followed up such acquaint
ances. Travelling as long as I had been, there
was one and another matter which I wanted to
refit in my little luggage, and so I went into the
" store " once and again for my purchases. It is
the standing miracle of a place like this, when it is
well kept, that the clerk is able to supply you with
everything you need, from a heron's wing to a
hand-saw. I found that they could fit my watch
with a new crystal just as readily as I found that
they could sell me hooks and flies of the last
London patterns. Sometimes the store was wholly
empty, and I was the only customer. Sometimes,
on the other hand, there would be twenty or thirty

18

274 How They Lived in Hampton

people there, almost always women, for I observed
that the women seemed to be the purse-holders
and were intrusted with the buying and selling
of this community. I stored up many questions
to put to Spinner about the mechanism by which
these results were obtained, and one afternoon,
as we were driving together, I brought them all
out, and made him answer them all together.

" I see you have got on quite a central affair,"
he said. " I shall make but a blundering story of
it, for indeed the system is one we have hit upon
from hand to mouth, if indeed it be a system yet,
and yet I think it is beginning to work well.

" When I came up here first with Workman, I
said to him that whatever else we did, in our new
capacity as manufacturers, we would wash our
hands of * store-pay,' with all its complications,
jealousies, and iniquities. You can see yourself
that there is a great temptation for a man who
comes into a new neighborhood, actually cuts
down trees and builds houses for a community,
to take upon himself the maintenance of the
country store. It is very easy to persuade such
a man that it is his duty to do so ; that he should
keep his workmen from being cheated; and, in
four cases out of five, it is very probable that he
does. Still the thing is false in theory. Either
a man is a manufacturer or he is a tradesman.
If he is a manufacturer, he is, so far forth, not
a tradesman, and if he is a tradesman, he is, so
far forth, not a manufacturer. Precisely as the

The Store 275

head of a factory had better not be the leader
of a military band, or as he had better not be
a publisher of school-books, he had better not be
the man to keep a country store. At least, that
was what I said to Workman, and what Work
man said to me. We had seen endless jealousies
among workmen because they supposed their
employers were cheating them in this way, and
he said that, in our model town here, this diffi
culty should not exist. I do not think we gave
much thought as to what should come in its
place; I suppose we were too easy about that,
and imagined that it was one of those things
which would take care of itself. In which easi
ness of ours, however, we were much mistaken,
for the thing has given us as much difficulty as
anything has given us which we have had to
handle here. It has given us the more difficulty
because we are what you see, — the only element
of life here ; there is absolutely nothing but what
we bring here, which divides this place from such
a wilderness as you saw yesterday when you were
fishing above Jotham's Ledge.

" We both saw, when we looked at the prop
erty we had bought, that there was a building
for a store, which the old company had carried
on. Its reputation was of the worst. They had
paid their workmen in orders on the store, and,
rightly or not, the workmen thought that these
orders had been the means of endless cheating.
When we began to talk with men about coming

276 How They Lived in Hampton

up, the natural question was where they were to
do their marketing, and how they were to buy
their groceries, and so on. This question we
could only answer by the proud statement that
there was to be no store-pay, — -that though we
did not pay much we should pay cash, and that
they might buy where they chose. This pleased
the workmen very much, till they found that
buying where they chose meant going down to
Wentworth or going down to Whitby's. And
before long, there came a drummer up here, who
saw we had an empty store, and asked if we did
not want to have a store up here, and we said
we did. Before a week was over, he communi
cated with his employers, and they had sent up a
clerk who had prospected, and we had a store es
tablished here, purely on Adam Smith's principle,
that the demand created the supply. The man
hung out a big sign, and his goods began to come in.
" I found very soon that the people disliked
him and his quite as much as the people before
them disliked the store-pay of their employers.
Naturally enough, his principals pushed off on
us what they could not sell at home, and, in par
ticular, they pushed off on us the wares, such as
they were, of which they were special agents.
The boys laughed very much because there was
an immense display of canned tomatoes and
canned corn and other such stuff, and they said
they were expected to live on canned vegetables
that were ten years old. Somebody would take

The Store 277

the cars down to Wentworth, and the next day
would have his groceries sent over the road here,
for a quarter dollar, and then would brag to the
others about how much he had saved by his lit
tle journey. So they very soon starved that man
out. After him, the Wentworth people tried to
establish a branch here, but on the whole they
gave that up. It was better for them, though
it was not so well for us, to have our men send
their wives over the road and do their shopping
at their headquarters establishment, than it was to
be keeping a couple of clerks alive here through
the machinery of a separate store.

" It happened that at that time George Holy-
oake was in the country. I do not think his mes
sage was introducing the Rochdale system here,
but I knew he knew all about it, and I sent to him
and asked him if he would come and see us in the
course of his travels. So it was that our people
had a chance to hear him talk one night, and he
was good enough to give them an off-hand talk on
the working of the Rochdale system, and said
something as to the reason why it had not in
troduced itself more fully in America. The rea
son is, in brief, that our people like to move from
place to place as much as they do, and the Rochdale
plan really rests, though I hardly think the English
men know it, on the understanding that the more
intelligent workmen in a mill stay by the mill from
the time they are born till the time they die. At the
bottom of his boots, the Englishman does not like

278 How They Lived in Hampton

to move from place to place with his family ; while
at the bottom of his boots an American does.
However, we had had a great deal of trouble
from the supply and demand system, and Work
man himself and some other of the more intelli
gent men were well disposed to try the Rochdale
system, as Holyoake explained to us. Mark my
words. You are going from place to place in
America, and you hear a great deal of talk about
co-operation in trade ; but I tell you that the man
is a fool who thinks he knows more about the
principles of co-operation than these hard-headed
Englishmen have found out in the course of
seventy-five years of every kind of experience.
They do not theorize a great deal in England,
but they do know facts ; and the Rochdale system,
which is a difficult system to explain, has come
into being from the observation of the failure
of more systems than were ever tried in Amer
ica. So far as I have seen, the experiments of
co-operations in trade in America have failed very
steadily, because in every instance there was a man
who was more or less a crank, who founded the
store, or whatever he called it, and he was deter
mined to try his own system. Now the Rochdale
system is not any man's system in particular; it
is the result of a great many failures and some suc
cesses, and the fact that it works as well as it does
in England is a certain and strong argument in its
favor."

I said to Spinner that I ought to know what the

The Store 279

Rochdale system was, but that I did not, and asked
him if there was any brief statement of it. He said
" Oh, yes ! " and he telephoned to the store to ask
them to send over to me one of their little reports,
which had an account of the system as they meant
to apply it ; and I will print it in the form in which
they gave it to me at the end of this chapter.

" The upshot of it all is," said Spinner, " that
the store is well kept and not badly kept. Old
Randolph was right when he said that there was
no manure like the foot of the owner. They have
turned out a good many clerks, and a good many
have resigned because they wanted to turn them
out, but I am disposed to think that those young
fellows they have there now understand the busi
ness quite as well as if they had been sent up from
New York for the purpose. I know very well that
the two young women who keep the accounts and
write the letters understand the business a great
deal better than most of the people I see in similar
capacities, when I am in Broadway. Here is some
thing gained at the beginning. In the second
place, nobody can complain ; or, if he does com
plain, he carries his complaints where he ought to
carry them, instead of bringing them to me or to
you or to Workman or to anybody else who has
nothing to do with it. What do I care whether
the ' boiled shirt ' which one of my pickers buys is
made according to the last London fashion or not?
I would not be bothered with such things, — and

280 How They Lived in Hampton

as this thing works I am not bothered with it.
The man who buys the shirt is to a certain extent
the man who sells the shirt. At all events, if the
person who selected the shirt has selected it wrong,
it is the fault of the buyer, who ought to have been
at the quarterly meeting and chosen somebody else
in the directory. You can hardly understand, liv
ing as you do, what a relief it is to be relieved from
all this nonsense.

"Then, in general, all these co-operative shops
have the great advantage that they have no need
whatever to advertise their wares or their existence.
You will find that the largest co-operative shops in
England hardly advertise at all. Every purchaser
is interested in making somebody else purchase,
and he is ' touting,' consciously or unconsciously,
for the shop all the time. When anybody comes
to make a visit here, — you, for instance, — the
visitor goes to the store and buys there. And
when you bought a watch-key the other day it
was to the advantage of every man in this village
that you bought it here instead of buying it in New
Haven. If you only take into account the relief
to you that you do not see the long bragging ad
vertisements in the village newspaper, it is a good
deal ; but really these people have no occasion
whatever to advertise.

" Of course they have no occasion whatever to
keep adulterated goods, or to keep anything which
is not what it pretends to be. Why should a man
cheat himself? Why should the person who is

The Store 281

going to buy the goods send an agent down to
New York to buy pickles which are artificially
stained, or coffee which has been made out of
paste, or anything else which is not what it pre
tends to be? You are pleased to compliment our
shop ; really, this freedom from all temptation to
buy inferior articles has a great deal to do with
the merit of what you have seen.

" Whether such a system as I have described to
you can be made to succeed in America on a scale
larger than that upon which we are trying, it is
more doubtful. But I am quite clear about this,
— that if some man who knows this country well,
and knows the habit of our workingmen, will give
the same pains to this subject here that Holyoake
has done in England, we shall get an American
adaptation of the Rochdale plan which will answer
our purpose. The adaptation which we have made
here may not be such as they would need some
where else. What we have done is to give rather
more capital stock to the undertaking in the begin
ning than could be supplied by the simple co-opera
tive principle. Holyoake would have rebuked us
for this, I think, but it was really necessary in the
conditions in which we were. I hope as heartily
as he would do, that gradually we may have the
affair more precisely on the English basis, but that
is still a matter for experiment with us. I say this
because I do not, as I have said, care to vary much
from the only successful experiment of this sort
which has been tried in the world.

282 How They Lived in Hampton

" I had been greatly impressed by what George
Holyoake says in all his books of the desirableness
of each store maintaining, as a store, its reading-
room and other methods of instruction. There
was a very decent room or hall in the second story
of the store building, which we had turned over to
them ; and, after communication with Mr. Nourse,
I agreed to let that room go without any additional
rent, and to be at the cost of fitting it up with
tables and chairs, for a reading-room. It serves,
of course, for the business meetings of the pro
prietors of the store, and the men bring to it such
newspapers, magazines, and books as they care to
have there. They are permitted to smoke there,
and it becomes a very respectable club-room for
the village. After a while, the women complained
that, although they were often stockholders in the
store, they could not stay where the men were
smoking; and it ended in my giving the use of
another room, which was a sort of back building,
which was fitted up for a general reading-room,
as it was called, where smoking was prohibited.
I think, on the whole, this has proved to be the
more popular room of the two, and there is a little
competition between them as to which shall
get the latest magazines and the best, and the
presence of the women adds the element of at
tractiveness to the place, which, to a considerable
extent, competes with the attraction of the pipes
and the freer rules of the original room. All this
you will see if you go through the store ; or, if you

The Store 283

look at the accounts, you will see that something
— not much — is spent for the library and reading-
room in every quarterly distribution. When they
are prosperous, they are likely to make rather a
larger distribution ; then when they are poor they
appropriate nothing at all ; in fact, this goes more
or less by fancy, according as the drift of any meet
ing is led by a parsimonious member or by one
who has more liberal views."

I took an early opportunity, therefore, to go
into the store in the forenoon, after the women
had gone away. There was no one in when I
entered, but, at the sound of my entrance, Mr.
Ledger, the storekeeper, appeared from a room
behind, which, as I afterwards found, was the
reading-room.

I told him that people spoke to me about the
Rochdale system as if of course everybody under
stood it, somewhat as people speak about the
Christian religion as if everybody understood that.
But I said I had found a great many people talk
about the Rochdale system who knew nothing
about it, and that I was willing to confess that,
though I had bought coats and hats and slippers
and portfolios at the co-operative store in London,
I did not know why they were cheap, and indeed
I hardly knew why I went there.

I found Mr. Ledger was an enthusiast in the
matter, and was only too glad to have a hearer to
whom he could talk for one of the quiet hours of
the middle of the day, when he hardly had any

284 How They Lived in Hampton

customers. I observed that there was a boy, who
attended to the one or two children who did drop
in for some trifling purchase.

He said that the idea of co-operation in the
purchasing of necessary articles was, as I knew,
an idea which had been experimented upon, no
body knew how far back. " Nothing is easier,"
he said, " than for a dozen families to think they
will buy their coal together at wholesale, will
divide it in the quantities they want, and so make
the profit which would ordinarily go to the retail
dealer who keeps a coalyard. But practically, you
know such schemes as that never continue many
years. There are so many conveniences in the coal-
yard, that after all you go back to them, and
persuade yourself that the profit you made was
not worth the trouble. I remember that when I
lived in Boston I could go down to a certain point,
perfectly well known, at half-past five in the morn
ing, and I could buy my fresh fish there, at the rate
of about a cent and a half a pound. But I never
did go there. I went to a fish dealer, who made
me pay anywhere between ten cents and twenty
cents a pound. I did not want more than five or
six pounds of fish, and it was really not worth the
while for me to get up, perhaps before daylight,
go out to the place where fish was sold at whole
sale, and bring it back. In that story is told the
whole of the reason why we pay so much as we do
for articles at retail, and why, on the whole, it is an
advantage for us to pay it. I suppose there is no

The Store 285

profit more fairly made than the profit of the re
tailing middleman, much abused as he always is.
However, as I said before, nobody can say how far
back experiments of groups of people buying to
please themselves have been tried. Sometimes it
has been tried successfully for a good many years,
but nothing ever came of it.

" Now the peculiarity of the Rochdale system,
which has made it succeed and grow, is this. The
more a man purchases, and the more he can make
other people purchase, the larger is his interest in
the concern, and the larger his profit. If ten men
should subscribe five hundred dollars apiece, to
make five thousand dollars capital with which to
carry on this store, they would have, of course, an
equal interest in the profits of the store. They
would try, as they could, to induce as many people
to come there and trade. But there would be only
these ten people who had a personal interest in the
success of the store.

" If, on the other hand, every person who deals
with us is personally interested in making the store
successful, why, every one of them will bring in
more customers ; every one of them will buy with
us, rather than go down to Wentworth or to New
Haven to buy ; every one of them will advertise us
in whatever way he can. As a matter of justice,
or, I think, as a matter of religion, the people who
really sustain the store by buying goods at it, are
the people who ought to make the profit if there is
any profit to be made. It is exactly like a mutual

286 How They Lived in Hampton

life insurance company, you see. Supposing the
year is a healthy year, ought not the people to
have the benefit whose lives are insured? or, if it
is an unhealthy year, ought they not to pay for the
unhealthiness ? Just in the same way, if, for any
reason, the store is a profitable store, I think, as a
matter of Christian justice, the people who deal at
the store ought to have the advantage. What does
a profitable year mean ? It means that the price
which has been put on the retail of the goods was
rather higher than the necessities of the business
demanded. In other words, the man who bought
raisins and sugar here paid us rather more than we
need have asked him. If he paid us more, why
should not we give it back to him, if we mean to
deal — as, of course, we do mean to deal — on
terms coming as near to absolute justice as is
possible in human affairs?

" But this, you will say, is theoretical. Taking
the thing practically, here am I, managing this
store. I was brought up to this sort of business.
I have owned a store, and I have been a clerk in a
store. To be an owner means that I have come
out at the end of the year not knowing how I was
to meet my notes in February. This on the one
hand; on the other hand, I have been paid a
salary, once a week or once a month, from the
time when I had three dollars a week for sweeping
out a store, to the time when I had twenty-five
hundred dollars because I was the best person
they could employ at Pickering yonder. Now, I

The Store 287

am working here on a salary. I am one of the
kind of men that like to work on a salary. Some
men do, and some men don't; but after one has
had the experience of the ups and downs — the
good fortune and the bad fortune — of what is
called business life, if he is such a person as I am
he likes the regularity of a paid salary. A paid
salary I have here. Besides that, I own some stock
in this store ; on that stock I draw my dividends.
Besides that, I buy almost everything I need for
my family here. I buy just as any other customer
would buy, and, according to the amount of my
purchases in a year, I am also entitled to a divi
dend."

By this time I was a little confused, and I said as
much to Mr. Ledger. He laughed, and said : —

" The whole thing is so simple to us that we take
it for granted that everybody will understand it at
the first blush. But if you will study the little book
of directions of ours, and then come in and see me
to-morrow, I will try to make it clear to you."

Accordingly I took his book of directions, which
I copy here for the benefit of people as little in
formed as I was.

HAMPTON CO-OPERATIVE STORE.

For the information of members, of purchasers, and of
all concerned, the following statement is printed, copied
from distinguished writers on the subject of co-operation.
It will show the principles on which the store is con
ducted.

288 How They Lived in Hampton

Persons who wish more detailed information will receive
a copy of the Regulations of the Store, by application to
Mr. Ledger, at the store itself.

PRINCIPLES OF CO-OPERATIVE TRADE.

In a properly constituted store the funds are disposed
of quarterly in seven ways : —

1. Rent, and expenses of management.

2. Interest due on all loans.

3. An amount equal to ten per cent of the value of the
fixed stock, set apart to cover its annual reduction in
value, owing to wear and tear.

4. Dividends on subscribed capital of members.

5. Such sum as may be required for extension of
business.

6. Two and one half per cent of the remaining profit,
after all the above items are provided for, to be applied
to educational purposes.

7. The residue, and that only, is then divided among
all the persons employed, and members of the store, in
proportion to the amount of their wages, or of their
respective purchases during the quarter, varying from six
per cent to ten.

The peculiar distinction of a co-operative store is that
a fixed interest is divided upon capital, say five per cent
upon the shares each member holds, and then all net
profits are divided to the trade upon the business each
member has done.

No credit is allowed, of any sort, to any purchaser.
The store buys for cash, and its members have the
advantage for such purchase. It therefore sells for cash,
and for cash only.

The Store 289

To secure the necessary capital for making a store
which shall meet the needs of Hampton, the first twenty
dollars of profit earned by any purchaser will be charged
to his credit, as one share of his capital. After he is
the owner of one share of capital, he will receive five per
cent annual dividend on that share, and his profits will
be paid to him in cash at the quarterly settlements.

The store cannot keep open accounts with persons
who are not regular customers. Unless purchases to the
amount of one dollar are made in each quarter, the pur
chaser loses all right to a dividend.

The prices of the store will be as low as the best stores
in the neighborhood. The quality of goods will always
be what it is represented. We have no motive to cheat
ourselves, and, as the purchasers are the same persons
who sell the goods, we have no motive to tell ourselves
lies.

We spend nothing for advertising. If you wish to
increase the business of the store, tell your neighbors the
truth about it, and bring them to see.

RULES AND REGULATIONS.

1. Every person above the age of 14, residing in this
town, may become a member of the co-operative store,
on the payment of twenty-five cents.

2. This money will be placed to his credit

3. Each share of the company costs twenty dollars.
So soon as members have paid for one share, they are
privileged to attend quarterly, annual, and social meet
ings. Members are urged to complete the payment for
their shares as soon as possible.

19

290 How They Lived in Hampton

4. For the amount of all purchases made at one
time, the purchaser, if a member, will receive a metal
check, stamped with figures indicating the amount of his
purchase. He must present these checks. They are the
only vouchers recognized for his purchases.

5. When he presents these checks, once a quarter,
the cashier will give him a statement, made from them,
of the amount of his purchases.

6. He is entitled to a dividend in proportion to the
amount he has bought. Thus, if he has bought one
hundredth part of all the shop has sold, he is entitled to
one hundredth part of all its profits.

7. Until his first share is paid for, his dividends are
passed to his credit, in payment for that share. But it is
a great convenience to the store for members to pay in
cash for their first shares, at once.

8. On each share, thus paid for, he will be paid
quarterly a dividend of one and a quarter per cent, —
amounting to five per cent in a year.

9. The receipts of the store will be divided quarterly,
after the expenses have all been met, including rent, cost
of management, an allowance for depreciation of the
goods and furniture, and six per cent interest on capital.
The residue will be divided among the purchasers.

10. Purchasers who have not become members of the
society will receive only half the dividend to which they
would be entitled had they joined the society. And no
person will receive any dividend unless his purchases
have amounted to the sum of one dollar at one time.

OFFICERS.

i. The Officers of the society are a President, five
Directors, a Secretary, and a Treasurer.

The Store 291

2. They make their own rules.

3. They appoint the Storekeeper and his Clerks.

4. They are responsible for all purchases, and for the
careful management of the property.

5. The books of the society are open to the inspec
tion of any member, on the approval of a majority of
the whole Board of Management.

The Quarterly Meetings are held on the afternoon of
Tuesday after the second Monday of February, May,
August, and November. The Annual Meeting is held in
November, at such a time as may be ordered at the
quarterly meeting of that month.

And when I left Hampton, Mr. Ledger, knowing
that I had some thoughts of establishing a co-op
erative store at Pigotsville, where I had an interest,
gave me these cautions to officers, which he had
digested from the English writers.

THE MANAGEMENT: OFFICERS AND EMPLOYEES, THEIR
APPOINTMENT AND DUTIES.

i. The Committee and Officers. — There is almost
always a Chairman and Secretary, sometimes a Treasurer,
and a varying number of committeemen.

Election. — The Chairman or President of the society
is generally chosen by the members in quarterly meeting,
sometimes by the committee from among themselves.
The Secretary, if a paid servant, employed for accounts
and other matters of business, will be, and in the opinion
of most Co-operators certainly ought to be, appointed or
dismissed by the committee. If the Secretary is only a

292 How They Lived in Hampton

minute secretary for committee-meetings, etc., he will be
one of the committee, and will be appointed by them, or
might be elected, if desirable, in general meeting; and
in this case, all the other duties are undertaken by a paid
official, whether general manager, cashier, or otherwise.
The Treasurer may be chosen in either way. If there is
no Treasurer, the Secretary will discharge his duties. In
the opinion of some Co-operators, a Treasurer is not
necessary.

Auditors. — It is most important that good men should
be selected. They ought to remember what a grave re
sponsibility rests upon them in signing balance-sheets.
They should be careful of their own reputation, and
not run risks or try to screen the committee. They
ought to have a full knowledge of accounts, which is not
always found.

Payment. — In most societies committeemen are paid
for their attendance at the weekly committee ; but it is
most desirable, in fixing the scale of payment, to avoid
the likelihood of men trying to get on to the committee
simply for the sake of the fees. This is a danger to be
carefully watched in the co-operative movement. The
work of its managing men (not its paid officials, to whom
it is a profession) should be that of volunteers, who are
repaid in moderation for their expense of time and
trouble, and who will withdraw or resign their position at
once, without a moment's hesitation on the score of
money, if that is being done of which they so strongly
disapprove that they believe this to be the right course ;
otherwise they are not independent, and may tend to get
into the hands of men more powerful than themselves,
who are well aware they will not resign if they can possibly
help it.

The Store 293

The Secretary may receive some additional fee for his
clerical labors.

Sub -committees. — In most societies there are sub
committees to give special attention to the various de
partments of the society work, — one for groceries,
another for bakery, another for butchery, etc. In the
earlier stages of a society it may not be desirable, but
later on it becomes almost a necessity. As a rule, work-
ingmen committees have only the evenings free, and the
whole committee could not possibly all of them go into
the matters requiring attention. Subdivision of the work
is necessary.

Duties of Committeemen and Officers. — The Chairman
should have firmness, impartiality, coolness, keenness, and
tact. It is no good having a Chairman, however virtuous,
good-natured, or consistent, if he cannot keep a meeting
in order. The Secretary should be able to work hard
and continuously, must be well up in figures, and must
write well and quickly. A bad Secretary can bring a
society to grief very quickly. He ought not to try to
dictate to the committee, and, whatever his own opinions,
ought loyally to carry out their decisions. In a commit
tee there are always likely to rise up rival parties. This
ought to be avoided as far as possible. A member should
firmly state his opinion, and accept a defeat with good
temper, or, if the matter is serious, resign. He ought to
feel himself free to resign, if necessary, as has been men
tioned before. Party spirit on a committee is to be
deplored. The members should not send hot-headed
firebrands into office. They should send steady-going,
able men, who have a capacity for patient, persistent
enthusiasm that commands success and is not afraid of
difficulties. The committee should aim at keeping the

294 How They Lived in Hampton

confidence of their members ; should remember that the
constitution of the society is republican ; should not
mind criticism, but welcome it. It should be considered
a golden rule that the committee should never unneces
sarily keep anything back from the members, unless its
being known is likely to be injurious to the society.
Committees should desire publicity and criticism of any
kind within reasonable limits. They should not be thin-
skinned, or make too frequent appeals to the forbearance
of members. Members ought to have the moving power
in as many matters as possible, and this power should not
be taken from them.

Publicity and frank and full discussion of all matters
concerning the welfare of a society are essential to its
well-being. Many a society has come to a bad end
through the want of this. The committee should never
be jealous of rising talent among the members. There
are plenty of outlets for activity ; and, perhaps more than
anything else, what is needed now is that committees should
encourage young members to be personally interested
in the fuller and higher development of Co-operation
in many different ways. A great deal can be done in the
way of training up good and loyal members and active
and efficient officers in a society where a good spirit
prevails, and where the best men have an influence such
as they deserve.

Servants of the Society. — All servants of the society
are almost invariably appointed and dismissed by the
committee.

The Manager. — Upon the question what kind of per
son is the storekeeper, manager, or buyer, depends, to
a very large extent, the success or failure of the society.
Is he to be the master or the servant of the committee ?

The Store 295

What is to be the relation between them ? A manager
has great opportunities of influence through much inter
course with the members, and he can use it well or badly.
Many managers of co-operative stores are first-rate men,
and zealous Co-operators. Yet there are great tempta
tions to managers to aim at personal power rather than
the general welfare of the society.

Checks on Managers. — Some societies are content
with a guarantee or deposit similar to that demanded
from the Secretary or Treasurer. Such a guarantee merely
provides against certain kinds of dishonesty. It does
not provide against waste.

(a) The English shops have advanced so far in their
system that they provide for what they call Leakage Bonds.
To aim at lessening waste and preventing possible fraud,
many societies arrange for a leakage bond or agreement,
to be signed by the manager. In this he binds himself
to return as much money as is equal to the value of the
goods intrusted to him, subject to a deduction for leakage
(i. e.t waste and loss in weighing out). Opinions differ as
to the leakage allowable, and it depends partly on how
the accounts are made up ; id or $d in the pound is a
very ordinary average allowance.

(b) Check Systems. — There are many ways in which
a fraudulent manager or shopkeeper can cheat a society,
and no methods can obviate this altogether. At the
same time it is very important that in order to remove
temptation, and keep the business up to the mark, there
should be a check system, with a view to seeing how
much cash really passes through the manager's hands.

Let it be understood that the mere having of checks
or tokens, metal or otherwise, as explained before, to
enable members to claim their dividends at the end of

296 How They Lived in Hampton

the quarter, is not a check system in the sense of being a
check upon managers and shopmen. You may or must
have checks, as they are called, to give to members ; but
it does not follow that you have any check on your man
ager, or that the committee know whether they get all
the cash which is paid over the counter. For instance,
non-members who know nothing about the dividend may
come in, (but add) pay, and go away without any check,
the shopman pocketing the money and not being found
out. It has been found also that with the metal checks
employees may pilfer the checks, and their friends bring
them in and claim dividends at the end of the quarter.
With the paper checks, one being given for every sale,
there is some security, but even this has not always
worked well.

In large stores, the method of the shopmen giving the
customer a ticket, who takes it to a boy, who gives metal
checks in exchange and registers each shopman's sales,
has been found fairly satisfactory. For the whole subject,
which is a difficult one, see " Manual of Checks," published
by the Central Board. Apparently, the ideal check system
has yet to be discovered. Still, it may be said generally
that a good committee can soon find out if a manager is
doing really well or not, and that, as in so many other
matters of management, the only thing to be done may
be to say to a manager, " We do not charge you with
dishonesty, but simply with want of managing power.
Experience shows every day in every kind of business,
that, of two men with the best intentions, one can make
a good profit and the other will make a serious loss. We
have given you a good trial, and tried to help you. We
propose to part with you and take another manager."

The Employees. — The shopmen, baker's men with the

The Store 297

cart, and others employed by the store, will be appointed
by the committee, who, if they are wise, will give their
managers and branch managers a good deal of power in
this matter. Get good managers, and trust them in minor
matters ; give them power over those below them, if you
think they will use it well; and while always willing to
investigate complaints, show the employees that you do
trust your manager. If the committee as individuals
listen to the complaints of shopmen, clerks, and others,
they may do a great deal of harm. Branch managers
should be made as far as possible responsible for what
goes on at the branches, and, if possible, should have a
pecuniary interest in the success of the branch.

Bonus to Employees. — Many societies have begun this
plan, and under pressure from their members have given
it up. It may fairly be said that, if Co-operators believe
in the principle of workmen having a pecuniary interest in
their work, they ought to apply it to the shopmen in their
shops. Many Co-operators show by their votes in meet
ings and by their practice that they do not believe in this
principle. On the other hand, many do. Some com-
mitteemen would gladly apply the principle if they could
prove to their members that a real saving is effected by
it. If it is to be conceded as an abstract principle of
justice, not many societies will carry it on that ground.
It is worth considering, whether the plan which has been
tried in some societies, of giving a bonus on wages, at the
same rate as the dividend declared, e.g., is. 6d. to $s. in
the pound, according to the success of trade in each
quarter, is not a mistake, except in very small stores.
Rather it would seem that each small group of employees
should be made to feel a direct personal interest in the
part or branch in which they are engaged. Then they

298 How They Lived in Hampton

have much more chance of getting something by their
efforts than they have as individuals of raising the general
dividend for the whole store \d. or 2.d. in the pound, which
will bring them but little after all. Where departmental
accounts are kept, it ought not to be difficult. If so
cieties and committees would turn their attention more
fully to this subject, and not listen to isolated instances of
failure, it is probable they would find that there is a good
deal more in this matter of profit-sharing by employees
than has yet been found out. The number of employees
employed in distributive work in stores is about 13,000.
Almost all societies close the store for one half-holiday
in the week, generally not on Saturdays. In addition to
this unusual privilege, the hours of labor are usually con
siderably less than the hours in private shops. The Sat
urday half-holiday for shops was largely inaugurated by
Co-operators. They felt that shop-keepers had as much
right to the holiday as they had. For rules for shopmen,
see a useful paper at the end of " Model Book-keeping."

Average Working Expenses. — These vary a good deal :
in some stores, they are as high as seven and one half per
cent or more, in some below five per cent ; but a great
deal depends on local circumstances. It is impossible to
lay down a rule. Inquiries should be made of societies
in similar circumstances.

Stock-taking. — Quarterly stock-taking (or half-yearly,
where the accounts are only made up and dividends de
clared half-yearly) is a most important matter, and it may
become a fruitful source, not only of error but of fraud.
It must be done on a systematic principle, and the mem
bers of committees should personally superintend it.
Stock ought to be taken at cost price> unless the goods
are deteriorated, or the market value has gone down. In

The Store 299

that case, they should be taken at what they would cost
to buy at the time stock is taken. In no case ought
goods to be put at more than cost price. To do so is to
appropriate the profits before the work of selling has been
done, and the expense of selling provided for.

CHAPTER V

THE ENTERPRISER

I ASKED Mr. Spinner one day, with a good
deal of curiosity, in what consisted the dif
ference between their plan and other arrange
ments of co-operative workmen. I had always
been taught, at college, and by the superficial
writers on modern social order, that, while dif
ferent nations had had different forms of success
in Co-operation, no one could yet claim that suc
cess in co-operative manufacture which he felt sure
the Hampton plan had secured.

It is generally said that the co-operative system
of house-owning which in America is called the
Philadelphia system, by which a Philadelphia work
man comes to own the house he lives in, is peculiar
to America.

It is generally said that the co-operative system
of savings-banks, — as it was discussed by Mr.
Scheffer, — in which the small depositors are
themselves the capitalists who lend to the small
borrowers, is a system peculiar to Germany.

It is said also that the Rochdale system, the
system of co-operative buying and selling, as it
has been described in the chapter above, called

The Enterpriser 301

"The Store," has succeeded in England, and
nowhere else. And it is popularly said by the
general writers on this subject that co-operative
experiments in manufacturing have been short
lived, or have been on too small a scale to be of
much account in the great exigencies of modern
commerce.

Mr. Spinner replied by saying that there are a
good many large exceptions to the statement that
co-operative industry has not succeeded on a large
scale. The fishing industry in Great Britain, in
France, and in America, has always been con
ducted on this principle. The men who go on the
voyage divide the profits of the voyage by a scale
determined long ago, — in which the master's rate
differs from the mate's, his from the expert sea
men, and his from the novice or the boy. The
great cheese factories of the dairy towns are con
ducted very largely on this principle. The farmer
who sends in only a gallon of milk a day is a
shareholder in the enterprise of the year, and re
ceives his proportional dividend as regularly as if
he furnished half the milk needed for the enter
prise. The difficulty comes, unquestionably, —
this was Mr. Spinner's theory, — when the kind of
manufacturing is such as to require a large invest
ment of capital. In the cheese factory the raw
material is the principal charge. In the fisheries
the daily labor is the principal charge. But the
factory requires a much larger plant, in proportion,
than either fishery or cheese factory.

302 How They Lived in Hampton

This difficulty had been met by the Co-operators
at Hampton when they agreed with Mr. Nourse to
pay him a regular interest on the capital he fur
nished for this purpose.

But even then the Co-operators in manufacture
meet a second difficulty. They are trained to
make goods. But they may make as well as
Aladdin's genii, — and this will be of no use, if
they cannot sell. More than this, — it is of no use
to make well unless you can buy the material
cheaply and to advantage. It is clear enough that
a man who is weaving cloth cannot be buying
wool, — perhaps a thousand miles away, — nor
selling cloth, after it is made. The workman who
spins and weaves and dyes is another person, in
another business, from the manager who has to
buy wool in one market and to sell cloth in an
other. And, if the workman has to be dependent
upon some commission merchant who undertakes
for him either of these duties or both, he is in as
uncomfortable a position as when he was de
pendent upon the capitalist. In practice, in the
ordinary system, the capitalist undertakes this mid
dleman's affair. He buys the wool, and sells the
cloth, — if the enterprise is like that at Hampton.

But there is no reason, in the nature of things,
why a capitalist should know how to buy wool or
sell cloth any better than the weaver or spinner.
It is a business wholly distinct from the business of
lending money. And, in point of fact, the failures
of manufacturers come in quite as often because

The Enterpriser 303

the men who have this part in charge do not carry
on their business well, as because the goods are
not up to their standard when the workmen have
failed in their duty.

" It is here," said Mr. Spinner, " that you find the
distinctive part of our system. Nourse furnishes
the money. We pay him for it, — as we would
pay any bank for money which we needed. The
workmen make the goods. We pay them for their
day's work, exactly as you would pay the painter
who painted your house. But thirdly, we make a
separate business of contriving the work, determin
ing on the patterns and plans, buying the material,
selling the goods.

" This is not the affair of the workman. He
does not know how.

" It is not the affair of the capitalist. He does
not know how.

" In our plan it devolves on Mr. Workman and
myself. We think we know how. We try to
learn how. And the whole thing will go to
destruction if we do not know how. In point
of historical fact, there would be no mill here
on this basis if we had not made the negotiation
with Mr. Nourse, and made him believe it possible.
The old workmen and their wives know this ; and
the hands generally understand it. In practice
it is so clear that ' managing/ — buying, selling,
contriving, — are different operations from spin
ning, weaving, and dyeing, that the thing explains
itself, so soon as men look into it.

304 How They Lived in Hampton

" Very well. As I explained to you, we are
recognized as interested to the amount of one
third on the success of the concern. That is a
rough average, probably not quite accurate, but
nearly so, — and convenient. We are paid living
wages, — as if we were foreman of rooms, perhaps,
head-dyers, or whatever. But, when the yearly
balance is made up, whatever the profit is, Nourse
receives one third of that profit, the workmen
receive a third, — just in proportion to their wages,

— and we receive a third. If we were paid in
proportion to our wages only, we should not re
ceive so much. But you see, that is as broad as it
is long. If we were not to have this fixed share,

— one third of the profit, — we should never
undertake the management of the affair. Why
should we ? I am as good a master-weaver as the
head of either of our weaving-rooms. Why should
I undertake all this business of buying, selling,
planning, and in general ordering, if I am not to
be paid for it?"

Thus Mr. Spinner made me understand that
the failure of most co-operative enterprises has
resulted from the badness of the general manage
ment. This has resulted from the unwillingness
to pay the general manager. The natural sugges
tion is that capital shall have half the profit and
the workingman half. This is not founded on any
fixed law, but it seems to be a convenient and easy
division. It does not work. The reason is that
there is a third and wholly distinct business in-

The Enterpriser 305

volved. This is management. It means buying
and selling, planning, directing, selecting, enlarging
work or reducing it. It requires a different train
ing and a different use of time from the others.

Spinner showed me figures which he had drawn
out very carefully from the books of some of the
largest American establishments and from those of
some of the smallest. He had drawn them off
very carefully in tables. They showed what pro
portion of the gross earnings of these mills, year
in and out, went for the workmen, what proportion
went for material, what proportion went for the
profits of the owners, and what was the interest on
the capital at the market rates for the year. Of
course, one year varied from another. One figure
was up and another down, as the market for wool
varied, or that for cloth, or that for money, or that
for work. But, on the whole, in the average, it
was curious to see that his rough division into
thirds came out about fairly. To give to handi
work one third the profit, to management one
third, and to capital one third, after each had been
paid the minimum of its living rate, was evidently
an arrangement almost exactly just. One year
with another, you could hardly do better.

" In a word," he said to me once and again,
" co-operative enterprises generally fail because
they do not pay the management."

I said to him one day, that he had made this
sufficiently clear to me. Most business men

20

306 How They Lived in Hampton

would accept the statement as quite central, that
the managers of an enterprise must be well paid or
they will fail. Authors, for instance, do not find it
well to print and sell their own books. They find
it better to write them, and delegate the printing
and sale of them to other men who make that their
business. The money which the author receives
for his part of the work is pretty generally agreed
upon. In America, it is ordinarily ten per cent of
the gross sales at retail prices. The profit of the
retail dealer is also generally agreed upon. It is
forty per cent of the retail prices of the books he
sells. There is left, then, to 'the wholesale pub
lisher, the printer and the binder, to the freight
companies which carry the book from place to
place, and to the newspapers and magazines which
advertise it, fifty per cent of the gross sales. This
rough statement shows that in the business of the
manufacture and sale of books a very large part of
any profit is paid to management. The propor
tion will differ, of course, in different sorts of ad
venture. If I manufacture plain sheetings, I make
an article for which there is a steady demand.
The risk of putting it on the market is less than if
it were a volume of sonnets or a novel. But, on
the whole, men find that it is better to intrust the
sale of their work to people who are used to that
business, and to pay them well for it. An author
may print his own book, or pay the printer for
doing so. But he will be apt to have a very large
pile of his own books in his own attic or cellar.

The Enterpriser 307

In the long run, he will find it best to pay for the
oversight of publishing.

I said to Mr. Spinner that I could well see that
men acquainted with general business should
recognize the truth of his maxim, that you must
pay well for management. But I said I should
not think that when the day for the dividend came
the workmen would like it. I should think they
would be jealous of that part of the plan.

He replied rather grimly, as if I had hit a spot
which it was disagreeable to him to talk about.
I have observed that visitors who are not quite at
home with their hosts are a little apt to bring up
the most delicate questions, as if the solution could
be given in an epigram. Thus, in old times, an
English traveller would ask a Southern planter if
he thought the system of slavery abstractly just;
and an American clergyman to-day will ask an
English bishop why he does not prevent the sale
of clerical preferments. In somewhat this way —
inopportune, I will confess — I asked Mr. Spinner
whether the work-people liked the arrangement by
which " Management " took one third of the profit.
I saw in a moment that it was a matter a good
deal discussed, and that the renewal of the discus
sion with a novice annoyed him. I could not help
that, however, and, in truth, I did not much care.
I was there, not to entertain him, but to find, if I
could, what was their solution of the problems of
capital and the industry it needed, — or, if you
please, of industry and the capital it needed. Mr.

308 How They Lived in Hampton

Spinner had said, again and again, that the essen
tial part of their system was the distinct recogni
tion of the value of the management. I did not
understand the system, — that was very clear, —
until I knew whether the workmen liked the theory
as well as he did, who was himself a manager.

His mere manner was enough to show that this
was familiar ground to him, which he had had to
go over till he was tired, with every new inquirer.
Very well; I could not help that. Of course it
was to be often explained, if it was the distinctive
part of their system.

He asked pardon, however, for the annoyance on
his face, which he saw that I observed. Then he
really laughed at himself. " It is ground so famil
iar to me," he said, " that I forget that it is new to
others, — as the ticket-master forgets that the
woman who asks him questions to-day is not the
same woman who asked them yesterday.

" I do not think the ' old men,' as we call them,
though most of them are not forty, ever have any
question about this part of the plan. Indeed, they
know, as well as I do, that it is essential. They
know that none of them or any of us would be
here, unless the managers had laid out the system.
As I said, they know, as a fact in history, that
Workman and I persuaded Nourse to come into
the plan. They know, also, that we are the people
whom he looks to, — that he deals with us as far
as there is any dealing between him and the con
cern, — so that we are a necessity. What is more,

The Enterpriser 309

however, they know that, in fact, the thing works
well, — that they receive, on the whole, much
higher wages than they ever had before they came
here, — that the work of the mill is better than it
was in old times, and the reputation of our goods
higher in the market. They know that we work
with less waste and more profit, because we are
working on this general plan. So far, good. And
so far as those who began with us go, there is
never any discussion.

" But you are quite right in thinking that new
comers, who have not worked with us long, in
variably question this part of our arrangement at
first. They say that Workman and I have the
lion's share. The boys caricature us sometimes,
well; even the older ones will fling at us in the
club meetings and other discussions. Of course
there have been a thousand other plans proposed.
Of course, any hand new at the bellows thinks he
can blow better than the old hand did, and makes
his new suggestion. It generally amounts to this,
of course, — that a considerable sum would be
saved to the workmen themselves if a committee
of management of their own superintended the
work, as Workman and I do now, — if a fixed al
lowance were made to them for their compensa
tion, and then the whole profit were divided in
proportion to the wages. I do not see that they
are apt to wish to increase Nourse's share.

" But I ask nothing better than that a critic shall
have to put his plan on paper, and make it populai

310 How They Lived in Hampton

with the rest. Observe, there is no annual meet
ing where it can be proposed as a practical scheme.
Every one knows that these works are not run by
caucus or in town-meeting. No one is here long
who does not like to be here. And, unless the
man likes to come, and take wages at our rates, he
does not come. Still the whole scheme is certainly
democratic, and rests on the substantial satisfaction
of everybody. Naturally, it attracts more than an
average share of theorizers or schemers. So that
in any debating-club, as at the Union, it is very
likely that an Ideal Plan for its improvement shall
be brought forward. And in this country, particu
larly when times are bad, there will be a plenty of
broken-winded flannel mills, or other concerns
which have shut down, where the owners are open
to offers to buy cheap. There was a young man
here, named Crichton, who wanted to persuade
some of the other young fellows to go up to Eden,
twenty miles up the river, with him, and work out
a plan he had. So, in one way or another, we
have had plenty of plans for improving on our
method of sharing.

" This is the reason why I say so confidently
that the making an equal allowance to ' Manage
ment' has proved necessary, — I mean an allow
ance of profit, equal to that assigned to Work and
to Capital. It has proved necessary, because so
many of these other plans have been proved in
efficient. The men will not trust themselves and
their families to an annual caucus. They will not

The Enterpriser 311

go into a scheme which may be over-set in a
minute. And capital will not trust itself, unless
there is somebody to trust itself to. Theo. Brown
used to say that when you made a stocking, you
could not ' make believe ' round once, and then
knit into the ' make believe.' There must be
something to knit into. In practice, there must
be a management, which may contract with the
men and compact with the property owner."

I said that it was the fate of middlemen to be
unpopular. Spinner said that I need not tell him
that. But he said that that was one thing which
they were for; that some one must stand the
brunt ; and that, if he and Workman were honest
and impartial, and carried open accounts, which
every one might see, he would risk any unpopu
larity.

" In truth," he said, " with every year there is
less and less of such complaining or such criticism
as you inquire about. The scheme rests on its
substantial justice. When you buy apiece of meat
in the market, or hire a cab at the Forty-Second
Street Station, you do not complain because the
butcher makes a profit, or the cab-driver. You
do not suppose that either of them is there as a
philanthropist, and you do not suggest to them
that they shall send you a check on Christmas
Day, with your share of the profits of the year.
You recognize butchering and cab-driving as a
different business from your business, and do not
ask to share the cab-driver's profits, more than

312 How They Lived in Hampton

you expect him to share yours. You do share
profits in a Mutual Insurance Company, for there
you are all in the same enterprise, and you succeed
or fail under the same laws. And so, in the spin
ning and weaving, we are all in the same business,
and gain or lose by the same laws. But, as I said
in the beginning, two things are sure : (i) Manage
ment is a separate profession, which must be well
paid; and (2) Management involves permanence,
or there will be no confidence or security.

" I have told you," said he, " of the criticisms.
Now let me tell you a story on the other side.
When, in October two years since, the money
market tightened up as it did, half a dozen large
mill-owners chose to fail, and there was what you
might call a special panic in the trade in woollens,
besides the general panic on Wall Street, which is
apt to come round in the autumn. As it hap
pened, we were carrying an unusually large stock
of goods, which I did not choose to sacrifice at a
time when the market was badly depressed. But
we wanted money, — we wanted it badly. In
ordinary times, I could have had it for the asking,
at one of the three or four banks where they knew
our paper. But they would not look at me then,
and, — well, I do not like to go to note-shavers,
Now there is very little secrecy among us managers
here. And when I came home pretty blue, one
Saturday night, it was known quite soon Monday
morning what was the matter with me. Then it
was that the system was tested, Mr. Freeman.

The Enterpriser 313

One of those very men who had said the hardest
things of me not a year before, — you know the
man, he is that man Woodruff, whose son you took
a-fishing, — came round to me on Monday night.
He told me that they had been putting their heads
together, and comparing their bank-books, and
that, if I thought twelve thousand dollars would be
of any use to me the next Saturday, they could
manage that I could have it, and as much more at
the end of the month. And more than this ; he
said if we were pinched for money, as he thought
we should be likely to be, he had a list, which he
gave me, of forty-seven of the best hands he had,
who would not draw their wages for four or five
weeks from that time. Well, long before his five
weeks were up, I had sold my goods at very
handsome prices, and I was able to address them
a circular note, to thank them for their loyalty."

Spinner told this pretty story with a good deal
of pride. He opened his desk, and took out a
copy of his circular note, handsomely printed, and
gave it to me. It was in these words : —

OFFICE OF THE HAMPTON MILLS.

On behalf of the management of the Mills, and of
Mr. Nourse, who is absent in the Holy Land, the under
signed wish to express their thanks as well as his for the
loyalty, good sense, and courage with which all parties
have rendered efficient assistance to the Mills, in the late
severe commercial crisis.

It may be true that, in the disorganized condition of

314 How They Lived in Hampton

trade and commerce, such panics or crises cannot be
avoided.

But this is certain, that, with such good-will and de
votion to a common cause as have been shown by those
who have undertaken the enterprise of the Hampton
Mills, the convulsions of the money-market are not to be
greatly dreaded. We have had an opportunity to show
each other, if we did not know it before, that there is
strength in union. And such an experience as this of the
last two months is enough to prove that our enterprise is
on a solid foundation.

With new wishes to deserve the confidence and
respect of our fellow-workmen, we are
Their friends,

WILLIAM SPINNER.
JOHN WORKMAN.

"There was really nothing wonderful about it,"
said Spinner, thoughtfully, when he saw that I had
twice read his circular through. " No, — keep it.
I gave it to you to keep. I have more copies
here.

" There was really nothing wonderful about it,
if one will only remember who Jesus Christ was,
and what he meant to set in motion, — nay, what
he did set in motion. Mr. Freeman, if I could tell
the ministers what to preach, I would have them,
as often as once a month, show to people, espe
cially young people, how practical, how efficient,
— how business-like, if you please, — this gospel of
our Lord is. There is apt to be so much rhetoric
and poetry in preaching, that I am afraid young

The Enterpriser 315

people think Christianity is all outside of life, —
that it is matter of fancy or imagination. Now,
if I were a preacher, I should like nothing better
than to show that the Saviour was the most practi
cal reformer, as he was certainly the most success
ful reformer, not only in what they call in their
sermons the affairs of Heaven, or the Heavenly
Kingdom, but in what you or I or these young
people would call 'Every-day life.'

" Did I ever tell you of what Mrs. Spinner said
to a fine lady in Warburton yonder, who was
troubled because she could not keep her servants? "

I said he never had. Mr. Spinner laughed.
"Why," said he, "Nancy heard her long story
about the troubles she had had ever since she
began housekeeping, and then she said, ' Did you
ever try the golden rule ? ' '

CHAPTER VI
CHILDREN'S WORK

I NOTICED, on the first day when I went
through the mills, that there were no little
children at work in any department. There were
a good many young people, whom I should call
boys and girls, but they were, clearly enough, more
than sixteen years old.

I noticed, also, however, that there were no
boys loafing about the village. After my first
day's experience in seeking trout in the ponds
above the town, I tried to find a boy who would
go with me, to carry an extra basket I had, and,
indeed, for companionship. And although, after
a day or two, I secured the service of such a boy, —
who became a valued friend before I left Hampton,
— this was only after rather a careful negotiation,
and on special terms, which, if this paper does not
grow too long, I may have a chance to tell.

I was talking one afternoon with a man named
Holmes, whom I had fallen in with in the works,
and of whom I have spoken once already, and I
asked him particularly about what he thought of
the labor or work of children, and what they did

Children's Work 317

about it. He said that he did not know of any
fixed rule in the matter which would prevent Mr.
Spinner from hiring many more children if he
wished, or if he thought the work required it.
" But," he said, with a good deal of emphasis,
knocking the ashes from his pipe as a sort of
gesture accompanying, " he does not think the
work requires it, — and we do not think so, — I do
not think so, — and the men generally do not."
It was quite clear to my mind, as he spoke, that in
the face of such unanimity of " the men " Mr.
Spinner would not be apt to change his opinion.

" You see, Mr. Freeman," said Holmes, " most
of the men grew up in mills, — were trained in
them themselves, — and they do not like it. I
was in a mill in England, so young that I hardly
remember anything before I went there.

" Well, there is no doubt that a boy picks up
something that way. He gets steady habits of
work, I guess, and I guess there is a certain
promptness, — readiness, — call it what you will, in
good hands that have been trained so, that they
would say came from their beginning early. But
then, what is that? I have plenty of men and
women in this mill who never saw a loom till they
were twenty years old, who are just as prompt and
just as steady. They did not get it in one way, so
they got it in another.

" To go back, Mr. Freeman, I do not think, on
the whole, that men or women who grew up from
childhood in a mill want to have their children

3 1 8 How They Lived in Hampton

grow up so, if they can help it. If they can help
it, — that's where it is. Perhaps they think they
cannot help it. Perhaps the whole business is
counted so close — I mean is carried on with so
narrow a margin — that the wages of the family
only amount to enough to keep the family in
bread and butter. But then, what does this mean ?
I do not know how much you know of trade or
manufacturing. I know that there is no such
squeeze as that in the woollen business now, —
nor has been for twenty years, — nor is like to be.
No, indeed, Mr. Freeman ; and if there were any,
I would give up making cloth, and I would go to
Dakota and make wheat, or to Montana and make
wool, — that's what I would do."

And Mr. Holmes laughed as he thought of
himself on a ranch in Montana.

" You see," he continued, filling his pipe again,
" you see, Mr. Freeman, there are a great many
other things a boy has to learn, and a girl too,
besides spinning and weaving, if they are to live
decently and comfortably in such a country as
America. And I do not mean school learning
either. That 's all very well, but my children learn
a good many things, and need to learn them,
which Miss Jane Stevens does not teach them,
nor any other schoolmistress or schoolmaster."

I said that I believed he had a good many
children.

" Ten of my own," he said with some pride,
" and Peter, who came in with the mail just now.

Children's Work 3 1 9

He is just the same as one of ours, but he is
really the cousin of the others, son of a brother
of Mrs. Holmes, who was lost at sea. Eleven of
them there are. I took Tom into my own room
with me the day he was sixteen, — and I suppose
I shall let Susie come in the day she is sixteen, if
she wants to. But maybe she will change her
mind before then."

And he paused a minute, as if considering this
question, before he went on in his rather voluble
conversation.

" I told them, when we came here," he then said,
" that if we meant to have our children grow up
strong men and women, they must be in the open
air, they must have enough to eat and drink, and
they must want to eat and drink it. You see,
Mr. Freeman, it is my notion that all mill-towns
have suffered from the idea that they are to be
nothing but mill-towns. You say ' Lowell is a
factory-town,' and ' Holyoke is a factory-town/ as
if because they are factory-towns they can be
nothing else. Suppose you made the people in a
ship into one community in this fashion. Suppose
that when you launched her, you said to all the
people that sailed her that they were to be sailors,
or at sea, all their lives. Suppose you said so to
their wives and children, — just like those people
that live in the boats in Canton harbor. What
sort of men, I wonder, would grow up on your
ship? After all, the mill is only a ship on land.
And what I say is, that the boys and girls in it,

320 How They Lived in Hampton

even if they are, in the end, to work in it, want to
see and learn and know some other things, just as
the sailor's boys do before they go out with him,
— and, for that matter, his girls, who never go out
with him.

" Now it was easier for us to act on such a plan,
because here, from the beginning, the men who
owned this plant had the courage to say that they
would earn their money in manufacturing and in
nothing else. For the rest of their investment
they wanted interest and not profits. Perhaps you
know how they gave up the store, and said they
did not mean to try and make money out of that ;
that was not their affair. So they gave up the
tenements."

I said that I did know this, and that I hoped to
know more of the Co-operative system than I did
when I came to Hampton.

" Well, now," he said, " the same rule works, of
course, about rents and gardens, — houses, —
about these places where we live. Of course,
when a man like our Mr. Nourse buys a property
like this, there is a temptation to see what the
rents on the houses will be. It is natural to say,
* They have always rented for ten per cent on the
valuation or cost, and that will be but a very small
rent,' — so he will go on so. There is no great
oppression if he wants to do so. But I do not
believe it pays in the long run. To begin with, I
do not believe it pays any man to be in two or
three different trades. If he makes horseshoes, I

Children's Work 321

say let him make horseshoes, and not try to sell
ribbons in the evenings. If a man makes woollen
cloth, let him sell woollen cloth, and not have
another account for the grocery shop, and another
for the rents and repairs of his houses. That 's
the way it looks to me.

" Anyway, as you know, these people, or rather
this man, were ready to let us do what we chose,
if we only paid him the market interest on the
capital, and gave him a third of the profits, if
profits there were.

" Now I, and Spinner, and Workman, — well, a
good many of us, — we went in for Real Estate.

" Real Estate, Mr. Freeman, with a large R and
a large E, — a very large R, and a very large E.
' Fasten a man to the ground,' says I, ' and let it
be worth his while to make it worth living on/
No, Mr. Freeman," — and he laughed, — "I spent
a winter with the Cherokees once, at a place they
call Tahlequah. I saw enough of common prop
erty in land then and there, and I do not want to
see any more. ' Real Estate,' says I. And when
I said this to the others, I did not go back on
what I have been saying to you. Because when I
own a place, as I own this place," — and here
Holmes looked up with a certain pride on his
wife's trumpet vines and Dutchman's pipe, which
shaded the piazza where we were sitting, — " when
I owned this place, — when I bought it, — I did
not buy it to make money. I make money yon
der, — I make money by making cloth, — or help-

322 How They Lived in Hampton

ing make it. But I want a real home. I want it
for her, and I want it for them. And so I said
to Spinner and Workman, says I, ' You let these
boys and girls of mine live in a place I own, and
we shall all take care of it. You put me in a tene
ment somebody else owns, and for one I shall
be apt to let somebody else take care of it.' So
they fixed it, or all of us fixed it together. They
gave me a bond for a deed of this place ; it was
one acre then; I have another acre back there
now, and afterward I bought a wood-lot yonder.
I was to pay five per cent interest, and ten per
cent a year on the capital if I could, and I was to
have a deed when I had paid forty per cent. But,
you know, after we were sure the thing would work
here, it was not much money, and I drew out of
the savings-bank all I needed to pay up the whole.
Yes, it is a pretty place. But it 's a much prettier
place than it was when we came here. And that
is what I was coming at. If you do not mind, put
on your hat, and come round with me."

So we walked round his little domain. Yes, a
little domain, but his own. And he had all the
pride in it, and had the right to, which my friend
Mr. Coram has, when he takes me through his
grape-houses and other forcing houses. He made
me go into the large hen-house, and showed me
what he could of the methods of the hatching-
house. But he said he must not interfere too far,
or his wife and his girls would be after him. He
told me with pride that, excepting three days'

Children's Work 323

labor, when he hired a man to help in digging some
post-holes, and in some other heavy work, every
nail had been driven, every partition framed, and
every sash fixed in its place by the handiwork of
his boys. " Let them laugh at the Industrial
School," said he ; " that is what comes of it." Then
I had to go through the back lot, which had been
added to the other, and I was indeed surprised
to see the show he had of pears, and to notice how
scientifically even the beds of vegetables had been
trained. All the potatoes of the winter, all the
celery, all the tomatoes of the summer, and all that
Mrs. Holmes and her daughters would can, were
the product of this garden. All the poultry they
ate, and all the eggs, came from this hen-house,
and they raised enough to pay in simple barter for
their milk, which came from a neighbor, who on a
similar lot kept a cow, though he had to hire pas
turage. We were still surveying the crops when
the bell rang for tea. He asked me to take tea
with them, and I was glad to do so. It gave me a
chance to see the family, all the way down to the
little curly-headed girl who sat in a high-chair, and
kept the table clear for a small semicircle drawn
from that centre. There was a younger boy in
the cradle.

The supper, physically speaking, did credit to
Mrs. Holmes and to her daughters. This is not
the place to describe that matter. Indeed, the
rugged and hearty aspect of the children, who did
thorough justice to their mother's provisions and

324 How They Lived in Hampton

previsions, was what interested me. There was no
hurry at table, but " when hunger both and thirst
were fully satisfied," we adjourned to the piazza
again, and Holmes took up the line of his argu
ment.

" What I set out to say, when we went out into
the garden, was this. Suppose I granted to Adam
Smith and the other high-flyers, that Labor, as they
call it, by which they generally mean work, shall
be divided to the bottom, if you want to make
money. I do not grant it, but suppose I did. Sup
pose that every egg in the omelette you ate to-night
had been bought in Michigan, as on Adam Smith's
theory it would and should have been, in the
cheapest market. Suppose even it was as fresh,
coming from Michigan. Suppose that honey,
which came from Betty's hive, had been brought
from Detroit, and had cost a cent a pound less
than it has cost me. Suppose every pear which
was on that dish could have been bought in Went-
worth market cheaper than the money it has cost
us to keep up the orchard. Hark you, I do not
grant one of these things, but suppose it was so,
what am I for, Mr. Freeman? What is Clarinda
for? What are we living for? What is this house
for, anyway? Certainly it is that these children
may grow up into strong and good and well men
and women. In the long run, that is the thing I
have most at heart, and Clarinda. Now let us sup
pose that since April my radishes and strawberries
and raspberries and currants and peas and beans

Children's Work 325

and corn and cauliflower and cabbages and pota
toes have cost me a hundred dollars more than
they would have cost me in the market, — what
should I do with this hundred dollars? Suppose
I spent it — as observe I have spent it — on the
education of these boys and girls who have worked
on this garden, among other things. There are
four of them. Where could I have got for one of
them, for twenty-five dollars, what I have secured
by keeping him at work under my eye or his
mother's?

"But Adam Smith, or even Robert Owen, might
tell me that if the older boys and girls were in the
factory I should have twelve or even fourteen dol
lars a week more on the pay-roll every Saturday,
and that that goes a great way toward Clarinda's
account at the store for flour and butter and meat
and shirts and trousers and coats and bonnets and
gowns, and above all, for shoes," — and here he
laughed at his own enumeration of man's requisites.

" There is no doubt of that. And I do not mean
to say that eleven hearty children — for Peter is
all the same as our own — eat nothing. Eleven
children like these, Mr. Freeman, eat in a year well-
nigh seven barrels of flour, and other things in
proportion. Let 'em, says I, — the more they shall
have. And I do not pretend that my farm here, as
a machine for producing nitrogen and phosphates
out of the rain and the sun, compares with the
machines out in Dakota which do the same thing.
But I do claim, as the patent lawyers say, that, as

326 How They Lived in Hampton

a machine for training boys and girls into men and
women, it is much simpler and much better adapted
to the purpose than the complex machine by which
Peter works at a loom and earns money to send to
Dakota and buy wheat. You see what I mean."

Yes, I did see very well, and I was glad he had
worked it out for himself so well. He wanted
to show me his figures, and to please him I looked
at them. But I do not copy them here, though
I could, because the reader would incredulously
think they had been doctored. The truth is,
however, that such a spot as Holmes owned, if
manured by the foot of the owner, as John Ran
dolph said, becomes more productive than the
outsiders think. It was not difficult, in a place
like that, to procure the stimulants they wanted
for their garden-beds. They had only too much
working force, when they needed to plant and
to weed ; and the harvesting, as Holmes said,
laughing, took care of itself, when the family
was to eat the strawberries. The secret of suc
cess, if one spoke of the theory of the thing, was
that this very evanescent force which we call
labor could be applied at any moment when it
was wanted, without contract, without wages,
without book-keeping; and something came of
it. What came of it I had seen in the eggs and
milk and cream and honey and stewed pears on
the tea-table, and had heard of in the potatoes
and other vegetables of which he had told me.

As to money earnings from the children,

Children's Work 327

Holmes told me what hardly surprised me. He
said that all up and down the valley, within
three miles of him on either side, the farmers,
real farmers, would hire his boys for quite as
much as the woollen mills would pay them, at
several places between April and November, and
that he had rather let them go to such work, for a
week or two at a time, than keep them in the mills.
" That is what we gain," said he, " by building up
these truck farms, as, in fact, our whole system
of manufacture does. Somebody must raise the
milk and poultry and vegetables for the people at
work, not only here, but at Wentworth and at
every mill along this stream. You cannot import
all that food as readily as you can flour and beef.
And it ends in a set of farms, — well, you Western
men would not call them farms, but we do, — which
supply these needs. Now there are times when
these farmers need extra work, and a good deal
of it, and then comes the chance for my boys. So
they learn two trades, — and that is what every
man ought to do. Who is it that says every man
must have a vocation and an avocation ? "

"But you do not make Mr. Freeman under
stand the real secret of success," said Mrs. Holmes,
" unless you tell him that we own this place, and
do not hire it."

"Oh, I told him that," said her husband, "in
my long lecture to him before tea."

She said that she could illustrate the distinc
tion by telling me one thing. " Here is this vine,

328 How They Lived in Hampton

which you call so pretty, which is indeed the
glory of the front of the house. When we came
here, this piazza, was as bare and ugly as any
which would be found in New England. Now, if
we had hired the house, I should have spent
twenty-five cents for five papers of seeds. I
should have bought morning-glories, and cypress-
vine, and what they call cucumber-vine, and cobaea,
and perhaps some scarlet-runners. You see I
should have wanted to cover the front as quickly
as I could. Instead of this, so soon as I knew I
was to stay here, I sent to Mr. Misho's for this
one root of Dutchman's pipe, and paid my quarter
of a dollar for that. That was years ago. But my
piazza is more and more comfortable every summer,
with no cost to anybody, while all my morning-
glories, and annuals would have been cut down by
the first hard frost. I should have saved my seeds,
but I should have had to begin again every year."
Her husband listened, with a sort of pride for
the exact fitness of the parable, and said that
that instance did tell the whole story. "And
Clarinda isn't selfish," he said, laughing; "she
isn't half so selfish as the rest of us are. She
would simply be doing her duty in buying hei
annuals. For, if she lived in a hired house, of
course it would be her duty to make it look
pretty as soon as she could, — in six hours, if
she could, or, if not so, in six weeks. For my
part, when she sent for her Dutchman, I sent
for a Catawba vine. I bought a wheelbarrow

Children's Work 329

load of leather clippings from old Soule around
the corner, and treated my land with them.
Step round and see the vine with me," he said.
"I feed it with waste from the butcher's four
times every summer, and now look there."

He pointed up with pride to the magnificent
clusters of grapes, such clusters as civilized man
had always taken as the noblest type of plenty and
luxury. " There," said Holmes, " who does better
than that? In theory, you know, I ought to send
to Ohio or New York for those, and pay for them
in our goods. But, once in a while, I am not
sorry to upset Adam Smith in a good exception.
My boys made all that trellis, they will pick all
the grapes, and they will eat most of them ; there
are nearly two hundred clusters in all. But, after
all, these are only the ornaments. The real bread
winner of the place is the hennery yonder, with its
machinery for hatching out the little chicks."
And so we returned to the piazza.

Then there followed a long conversation which I
will not try to repeat. Holmes insisted that the
sunshine and rain on a man's place was a part of
his wealth, which he must invest if he could. Then
he said that the muscle and strength and skill of
the children was another part of a man's wealth,
which must be used, if they were not hurt in the
using. But then he fell into a more serious vein.

"I will not pretend, Mr. Freeman, that these
profit and loss reasons are the real reasons why I
bring up my children so. These are only my

330 How They Lived in Hampton

justifications after the fact, as the lawyers would
say. You are a Christian man, I hope, and I try
to be another. I can say to you, then, what per
haps I would not say at the street corner, — that I
want these children of mine to grow up as children
of God; sure of his presence, and happy in his
love. I have a notion that if they are in the open
air, they feel his presence, and see his work; that
he seems near to them, and they feel near to him.
Anyway, they are with their mother more, and
that is the best thing that can happen to them, for
we do not have our children any too long. And
if, in this open-air life, healthy and free, they do
grow up happy and good, why that is the whole
thing. You and I must not be counting coppers
or adding up columns of figures, to find out
whether one plan is better than another. If it is
better for them, that is all."

And as we went into the house, after I had
bidden good-by to his wife and the older children,
he said, with a good deal of feeling, " It troubles
me a good deal that the men who make laws, and
the men who write books, speak as if they thought
that a little more profit or a little more product
was the important thing. Of course they do not
think so. Of course every one wants more life, —
health instead of sickness, happiness instead of
misery, strength instead of weakness. A Christian
state cares for its people, and does not care, except
for them, for its things."

CHAPTER VII

THE SCHOOL

I REMINDED Spinner one day that he had
promised to show me something of the school
arrangements, and he said that if I were willing to
take a walk, we would both go down to the school-
house, and stop on our way to find Miss Stevens,
who was their teacher at that moment, and had
been for more than a year. We found an intelli
gent, wide-awake woman, perhaps thirty-five years
old, with a little of the firmness and regularity
which comes on people who have kept a school
for seventeen years, interested in her work, and
willing to talk about it. She said she would take
her keys with her, and show us the schoolhouse,
though there was, on the whole, very little to
show.

They were District 13 in a large township, and
the general school committee of the town had
found it was well to let them carry on things after
a rather exceptional way. The district committee
in New England has very large powers, and does
very much as it chooses, and particularly if one
member of the district committee is a member of

332 How They Lived in Hampton

the general town committee, the town committee
does not much interfere with the plans of the
district, so only the work required under the statute
of the State is done. There is no general law as
to hours, there is no general law as to the number
of weeks which the school shall be kept open; all
the law requires is that there shall be a school
every winter and a school every summer, with a
certain minimum beneath which no district must
fall, or indeed would be permitted to fall, in the
general state of public opinion. These people at
Hampton more than complied with the letter of
the law, and Miss Stevens assured me that their
results were quite as satisfactory as she had found
in places where the schools were kept on a more
conventional footing.

The schoolhouse was the old schoolhouse which
they had found there, — a perfectly simple build
ing, which might have cost a couple of hundred
dollars to build, with one large room only, and a
little anteroom, in which the boys and girls hung
up their coats and cloaks, and where they left their
overshoes. But I noticed that she or somebody
had ornamented it prettily with chromos and other
pictures ; they had a very good set of school maps
hanging upon the walls, and the general aspect of
the place was cheerful. I also noticed that the
platform at the farther end of the room was rather
higher than I should have made it. But I asked
no questions, knowing that " the dumb man's
borders still increase."

The School 333

Miss Stevens said that she had very little to
explain, and, indeed, very little to show. She
took me to the end of the room opposite the
platform, and threw open a half closet, half cup
board, which was there, and I saw in a moment
that it was a sort of alcove, in which they had
stored a great many books, — I should think more
than a thousand. This, she said, was the school
library; or, if I choose to call it so, a public
library. Mr. Spinner would tell me where they
got the money for it, and who had the books.
Then she said, laughing, that she was not only
the schoolmistress, but she was librarian of the
library. She opened another closet, and there I
saw were crowded in two or three tables, which,
she told me, were the reading-room tables; and
she explained to me how they could be brought
out, and arranged so as to cover up the desks of her
school-children, and serve her for a reading-room
in the evening of some of the winter months, when
the schoolroom was open for the purpose. " The
schoolhouse has to ' pay a double debt,' " she
said ; " and it is now opera house, now school
room, now library, and now reading-room. I am
retained by these gentlemen in the four capacities
of mistress of amusements, director of reading,
librarian, and schoolmistress. One of your wise
men says that every one should have a vocation
and an avocation and a ' third.' I not only have a
third, but I have a fourth. But, as another wise
man says, I make one hand wash another, and

334 How They Lived in Hampton

really the boys and girls are very good assistants.
There is nothing a bright boy likes better than to
be told that he may help in the library, and there
is nothing that gives him more self-respect than to
be put upon some committee in charge of the
newspapers or magazines in the reading-room."

I listened, well pleased, for the little woman was
now talking to me on what is rather a favorite
topic of my own, and I began asking her a librarian's
questions, and other questions which would hardly
occur to a person who had not had in hand a set
of duties which I have had half my life, but which,
with the reader, need not be spoken of. I found
that she was in no sort above her business ; on the
other hand, she was well disposed to magnify her
office, and she gave me some very good hints in
administration. But as to the sinews of war, as
to the way in which the money was collected and
disbursed which all these various enterprises de
manded, she always referred me to Mr. Spinner.

" But if your heart is in it," she said, " and if the
people you work for are sympathetic, as the people
are for whom I work, the thing does not require as
much money as people imagine, or as it requires
on paper, — no, not nearly as much as it requires
when you work from above below, as I have seen
such work done, when liberal people and generous
people were condescending to improve and level
up another kind of people. With us, nobody is
condescending ; we are, if you please, a little selfish.
It very soon appears that it is easier to have one

The School 335

of Trollope's novels answer the purpose of twenty
of us, or one or two copies of ' Harper's ' answer
the purpose of a large circle of readers, than if
everybody were selfishly keeping the book or the
magazine at his own house and occasionally lend
ing it. Very soon, after a year or two, the bound
volumes of the magazines became books of the
very first interest to children. All children like to
follow up a series of bound magazines. They like
it rather more than they like anything else. In
deed, Mr. Freeman, the difficult point with a public
library is at the beginning. The old proverb is
certainly true there. Somehow it happens that
the first five hundred books you buy are infallibly
stupid books. They are the ' books which no
gentleman's library should be without,' but which
might as well be manufactured out of wood and
leather, and nailed up permanently on the shelves.
It is not until you have done with the ' standard
books,' and begin to supply people with the every
day literature of the time, that they begin to un
derstand that it is worth while to go to the library,
and the time when they understand that it is worth
while to support the library is even later. But
when they have once tasted blood, there is nothing
about which a community is so unanimous as it is
in the support of its library. Here I make them
bring me everything. I make the man who comes
up on the train bring me the ' New York Herald '
or ' Tribune ' of that day, that I may have it on the
table of my reading-room. We cannot afford to

336 How They Lived in Hampton

subscribe for half a dozen dailies. But really, there
is not a night when one of my boys cannot pick
up a daily at the station as the train passes us, or
some one does not bring it in here. Our files
will not be very uniform, but we are, all the
same, supplied with something, and if people read
journals of half a dozen schools in politics, why, it
is none the worse for them. In the same way, we
have most of our magazines, — not all ; some we
subscribe for ; but I encourage people to send their
magazines to me as soon as they have done with
them. I promise them that we will bind them,
and, after a fashion, we do bind them, though you
would think it is rather homely binding. I have
taught the girls to do that. And the consequence
of all this is, if you should come in here, after the
first of October, or before the first of May, you
would find, every evening, that my tables are out,
that my periodicals are on the tables, and that this
little room is quite as full as it will hold of people
who have come in here to read. Indeed, last year,
I was obliged to establish a branch, of which Mr.
Spinner will tell you, at the other end of the village,
because we were overcrowded here."

All this entertained me, because it fell in with
various plans of my own, which had had more or
less success in various localities. Then I asked
her about the school hours, and the extent to
which she carried her scholars. " As to that,"
replied Miss Jane Stevens, " the committee is
good-natured, and leave me very much to my

The School 337

own devices. When I came here, I found that
the school had been very small, and, in fact, be
fore our mill was established, hardly anybody lived
in these houses, and very few of those people who
did live here had any children. I had kept school
in factory villages before. The general object in
most of them is to crowd the children through the
thirteen weeks which are required by law, so that
they may have the other nine months to work in
the mills ; and the pressure of the parents on the
committee, or, generally, of the directors of the
mills, is the same way. Then we are a good deal
pressed and embarrassed often, because the parents
are very anxious to get our certificate that the chil
dren have worked through the thirteen weeks, and
frequently they ask for the certificate before they
have any right to it. Then, if you refuse the cer
tificate, you get into hot water, and alienate that
family, and perhaps their neighbors.

" We have none of this difficulty here. Mr.
Spinner will tell you how soon he and his friends
determined that they would not have any children
working in the mills who were not sixteen years
old. I suppose that determination made them
trouble, but it gave me great joy. I did not in
sist upon what you would call a city school. I
was perfectly willing to fall into the habit of all the
country districts here, in having only a winter
school or a summer school; although Mr. Spin
ner was kind enough," she said, nodding to him
and smiling, " to let me have my own way in that

338 How They Lived in Hampton

regard. But I did say that I should like to have
the school open for thirteen full weeks in the win
ter, and that I should like to have it open for thir
teen full weeks in the summer. I ought to explain
to you, that I had made an agreement that I would
not teach anywhere else, and that my salary was
fixed to run from the first of January to the last of
December, so that I was to arrange the school as I
thought it best for me and for the community. I
do not think that I was selfish in the matter. There
were reasons why it would have been an advantage
to me to have had the school open for forty weeks ;
but, on the other hand, I was interested in Mr.
Spinner's plans and Mr. Workman's plans ; grad
ually I became acquainted with the men and women
who work in the mill, and if I were to do it over
again, and establish such schools as I wanted in
the villages up and down this river, I would not
ask for more than twenty-six weeks' work out of
the fifty-two, for these boys and girls.

" I did think, and I said so to these gentlemen,
that as we have a good many people who had not
had all the school training that they could use to
advantage, that it would be a good thing to open
the schoolhouse here for an evening school during
three or four of the winter months. I said that if
they were willing to do that, I would be here from
half-past six, when supper is always over, to half-
past nine. I said that I would not undertake more
pupils than I could manage, but that I thought,
with the help that I could find, which need not

The School 339

cost a great deal, we could manage perhaps as
many as forty pupils in the evening. In point of
fact, we had an average of about thirty- five, and
that is the way in which my time is divided.

" There is an evening school, which runs for two
months late in the autumn. There is a regular
winter school, which runs three months. There is
an evening school, which runs for two months more
in the end of winter and in the spring ; then what
they call the summer school comes in at the end of
May, and in June and July ; and for the rest there
are the holidays."

" Tell Mr. Freeman about your Mutual Im
provement Society/' said Mr. Spinner.

" I wanted to tell him about that," Miss Jane
Stevens said, " but I think I had a little rather that
he should see it first, and I wonder if you cannot
bring him around this evening. They do not meet
here to-night. They are going to give a sort of
exhibition at the other hall. Bring him to that, if
he is willing to sit through, and let him see what
we do with our native talent here. After the ex
hibition is over, I will tell him something of the
detail of its management."

Accordingly, at tea-time in the evening, it was
announced that Mr. Spinner and I were going to
the evening entertainment provided by the society,
and Mrs. Spinner and two or three of the older
children went with us. We walked up the village
street, and saw that other people were doing the

340 How They Lived in Hampton

same, to the church, and here I found that the
" entertainment " was to be given in the large vestry
of the church, which occupied the whole floor of
the building, and into which we descended by a
few steps, — the floor of the vestry being perhaps
three feet below the surface of the ground. The
room was not very high, but not so low but what
we could hear and see easily. It was prettily dec
orated by well-chosen prints, and a nice frieze of
well-drawn pictures illustrating the parables ran all
round it just below the wall. I observed, as soon
as I went in, that some forty seats were reserved in
front. For the rest, the hall perhaps seated a hun
dred people more, and these seats were all taken
before eight o'clock. The announcement had been
that the exercises would begin at five minutes after
eight, and in a moment I saw the reason for this
announcement. Those of the factory hands who
chose to come, and who were not released till eight
o'clock, had thronged across directly from their
work at the mill, apparently choosing to postpone
their supper until after the entertainment was over,
and they occupied the seats which had been re
served for them. So soon as they were all in, the
exercises of the evening began.

A young man, who I should not think was more
than twenty-one years old, stepped forward and
made a bow and said, " Ladies and gentlemen, we
have a programme of unusual interest to offer you
this evening. You will see that preparations have
been made for a scientific experiment," — and he

The School 341

turned and pointed to rather a large trough which
he had by his side. " At the last meeting of the
philosophical section, Mr. St. John was appointed
to tell us why ice floats upon water, and he has
prepared one or two experiments which will illus
trate this."

At once a young man stepped up from the floor,
and brought his block of ice with him in a basket,
showed how high it floated, and then, with various
tubs and pumps and other apparatus, proceeded
to give some simple information as to the proper
ties of air and water, and what would happen, and
what would not happen, etc., in such a way as to
interest his audience, and certainly teach some of
them something which they did not know before.
His statement was very short, and Mr. Spinner
told me that no person was permitted to occupy
more than five minutes, no matter if he had to
demonstrate the most elaborate truths known to
science. He was cordially applauded when he
had done, and withdrew, leaving his ice floating
upon the water. The president again stepped for
ward, consulted his paper, and said, " Two of the
young ladies will favor us with a duet." Two nice
girls came up on the platform; their music was
already placed for them on the piano, and they
played sufficiently well a duet from Mercadante.

" Mr. John Graham will read an anecdote."
Mr. John Graham proved to be an old Scotchman,
I should think sixty years old. He came up with
a book in his hand, and said he was going to read

342 How They Lived in Hampton

a story, which should not have been called an
anecdote, by Fontenelle. I do not know where
he found it; I had never heard it before, and I
never heard it since, but it was one of Fontenelle's
nice little stories, with a clever moral. It was read
in a very pathetic way, and held the audience for
Mr. John Graham's five minutes. And so this
" variety entertainment " went on, without the
slightest pause or breakdown. Sometimes the con
tributions were made by little children of seven
years old, sometimes by their fathers or their
grandfathers. They passed from grave to gay, or
from gay to grave, with apparently no prevision
or arrangement of contrast or similarity, but by
the mere accident which had placed them upon
the programme. But what was important was,
that they interested the audience, they were curi
ously suggestive, and they must have started con
versation and thought as hardly any elaborate
lecture could have done.

I could not make Spinner understand how curi
ous I thought the whole thing. He did not, in
deed, look at it quite as I did. He looked at it
rather as something of course, which had grown up
quite naturally out of the exercises at the Sunday-
school, and out of the school exhibitions. He gave
Miss Jane Stevens the principal credit of it, and,
after it was over, she walked home with us, and I
tried to make her give me some idea of the way in
which all these people had been brought to be
their own teachers and their own entertainers upon

The School 343

a public stage. She said that she did not think any
body had planned these entertainments, but that
they had grown up simply enough out of a little
society of boys and girls, which had formed itself
when these young people were all five years
younger than they were now. They had had, as
most villages had, the usual run of fourth-rate
lecturers coming up and charging money for their
entertainments, till they had got tired of such
things. She was, in the meanwhile, trying to
interest them in the reading-room and in the
library, but she found that they wanted to get
together; they wanted to have a chance to talk
and to walk home together, and she had proposed
that there should be two or three little entertain
ments, conducted by themselves, at the end of
every evening. But it proved that it was much
easier to arrange for a field meeting of the society
once a fortnight than it was to be getting up little
separate entertainments more frequently, and grad
ually the thing had assumed the shape which I saw.
Of course, those who could sing had a certain
commodity which they could always offer at these
entertainments; but it was her business, and the
business of the other leaders of the society, to find
out what contribution other people could bring in.
The men of a more mechanical gift were rather
pleased if something which they had read in the
" Scientific American," or in the other journals,
could be made use of to their fellow-workmen. Oc
casionally, a stranger was at hand ; but, generally

344 How They Lived in Hampton

speaking, she had found that strangers did not
understand their audience as well as they under
stood it themselves. A declamation always in
terested these audiences, but it would not have
interested them if it had been the declamation of
a professional reader from the outside ; it interested
them because they listened to their own sons or
their own daughters. " And in short," said Miss
Jane Stevens, " in all our effort to provide amuse
ment for our winter evenings, there is nothing on
the whole which is so popular as this entertain
ment of the Mutual Improvement Society, and that
you may guess, now that you see it in the autumn,
and if I tell you it has been kept up throughout
the year. For the rest," she said, " we make quite
a point of keeping up the musical training of the
village. When I say we, I mean I and Mrs. Spin
ner and Mrs. Workman and the doctor, and two or
three other people, on whom the stress of the
effort comes ; but with every year we have more
and more helpers. Mr. Spinner will tell you that
we have quite the beginning of a little band. You
heard how well those two girls played, and how well
that quartette of boys sang ; and really, last winter,
our six or eight concerts were not only a pleasure to
those who heard, but were really creditable to the
' performers." I asked her whether I had now
found out the secret of the high platform in her
schoolroom, and she said I had. She said that
when they did not think they should have a large
audience, the children felt more at home in the

The School 345

schoolroom, and that she had many a time met
small companies of them there, when they should
never have thought of announcing an entertain
ment in the vestry of the church. "But here,"
said she, " we can act charades, we can speak
dialogues, we can tell stories. Why, I have read
them half the * Arabian Nights ' here, when they
were sewing or knitting, or the boys were drawing
at the table yonder. Indeed, they are never more
pleased than they are to have what they call an
evening in the schoolhouse ; but that is purely an
informal thing, as they might meet for an even
ing party at Mr. Spinner's house, or at Mr.
Workman's."

CHAPTER VIII

HOURS OF WORK

MR. SPINNER explained to me their experi
ment about the hours of work in a long
conversation, of which I took full notes at the time.

" You will easily see that matters of some diffi
culty under any other system of management settle
into matters of detail with us, and adjust them
selves.

"Workman and I had both been anxious and
interested in eight-hour plans. But we knew
enough to know that if one State in America passed
an eight-hour law, and the next did not, the result
would be simply the driving factories and workmen
across the border, and that nobody would gain
anything. So that, though I have agitated a good
deal of that thing in general, I had never seen any
good chance in detail. Our system here differs
from anything I had heard of, and it came to us, as
such things do, rather by accident than studied
design.

" I was in New York, — it was in April, — the
end of April, — and I met a jobber there whom I

Hours of Work 347

had not seen before, a Boston man named Atkins.
He took a fancy to some goods he had bought
from an agent and made an appointment to see
me. He told me that his people — some tailors
he dealt with — liked the goods, and he wanted to
know how large a lot I could send him steadily for
six months. I figured on it a little, and told him.
I saw he was disappointed, — a little annoyed, I
thought. It was the first intimation he had had that
we were not one of the great slam-bang concerns,
to whom a hundred million pieces are nothing at
all. When I saw this, — I hated to disappoint a
good customer, — I said, ' Either that, — or twice
that.'

" He asked what I meant, and I said I would
light up, and run two sets of hands.

"Well, he did not care what I did. If I had set
the mill afire, he would not have cared, so his
tailors were suited. He accepted my first price,
and I came home a good deal frightened, to tell
Workman and the rest what I had done. I do not
run this mill by caucus. No, sir ! I do as I choose,
and make the plans ; and other men take their parts,
and the plans come out as well as they can. But
this time I did call the heads of rooms into my
counting-room, — what you would call ' foremen/
— and I said that we had a chance to double profit
if we would double work, — and that I had done
this thing. But I said I hated night work. It was
demoralizing ; it was bad for the men and women
engaged ; and the work itself was bad when it was

348 How They Lived in Hampton

done. I said that if we had won any credit with
these unknown tailors, it had been by doing work a
little better than other people did, and that we
should very soon lose that credit if we did not
keep up to the standard of the goods they had re
ceived from us. Then it was that, on a hint from
one of the men, we tried, rather as an experiment,
the system on which we have run this mill ever
since. There is a certain freemasonry about
weavers and spinners. They know of other weavers
and spinners, just as jewellers know of other jew
ellers, and printers of other printers. I gave out
word that, beginning with a fortnight from the next
Monday, we were going for the summer on the
eight-hour principle. At the same time, I gave out
word that the mill would open at four o'clock in
the morning, and that the people who came to
work then would be dismissed at twelve for that
day. There was not to be any cessation of the
work, however. The power was to be kept on and
the machinery kept running, and another set of
hands would come in at twelve and work till eight
in the evening. I do not believe the thing could
have been done so easily in a large establishment
as it was with us. But the men and women wrote
all up and down the valley, to friends that were
in other mills, who wanted to make an easy sum
mer of it, and before my fortnight was over, I had
people enough trooping in here, who wanted to be
taken on this rather luxurious arrangement. You
will see yourself that the trouble is in the inspec-

Hours of Work 349

tion of the work more than it is the doing of the
work. Nobody likes to be responsible for work
done in his room of which he did not see every
detail ; but the heads of rooms managed that after
a fashion. They worked much more than eight
hours, and they had head men of their own, whom
they liked, and in whom they had some confidence,
whom they put in charge in their absence. Then,
as you will easily see, under our principle, whore
each man has something of the interest of an
owner, there is a great deal more mutual oversight
than there would be in a room where everything
was cut-throat and every spinner was trying to do
as little as he could, so he could only be paid for
doing more. Then you would find that a girl who
tended a frame, made, by methods known to her
self, some private arrangement, so that another girl
whom she knew — perhaps her sister or some
friend of hers, somebody who lived in the same
house with her — should tend that same frame in
the afternoon. There is not much sentiment about
a spinning-frame, but there is some, and a girl
would not like to come in in the morning and find
things amiss, when an entire stranger had been
running her machine, while she would be good-
natured enough about it if the person who had run
it was her own prot/gfa, or in some way was her
friend.

" So it was that for that summer we ran this mill
sixteen hours where we had run it ten hours before.
It did not quite double the time, but, in truth, al-

350 How They Lived in Hampton

though it did not quite double the work, it came
nearer it than I expected. We had not the diffi
culty which everybody told me we should have, of
the machinery getting out of order, because nobody
was responsible for it. It ended in our holding a
person responsible for a piece of cloth who began
that piece. This was not strictly fair, but it was so
evident that there must be some rule about it, that
everybody accepted that rule. In point of fact,
the cloth stood inspection remarkably well, and,
after a little fuss at the beginning, I never found
that anybody pretended that he could tell the dif
ference between work which was done in the after
noon and work which was done in the morning, or
vice versa.

" I suppose there was a difference, but it was
one of those minute kinds of differences which you
lawyers say the law does not care about. The up
shot of it all was that I held my contract with this
Boston man, who has been one of our best cus
tomers ever since.

" But when it came to the first of November, we
stopped this double business. In the first place,
our contract was up, and in the second place, I
and Workman and all the best heads of rooms
were resolute that we would not have any night
work. Of course, by the first of November, we
were burning a good deal of oil, morning and
night, — that was before we got in our electric plant,
— and the oil was an expense. It happened that
year that I had just as lief run light as not. I was

Hours of Work 3 5 1

satisfied that the country was making more goods
than it could sell, and I did not want to be found
with an overstock in the spring. The men and
women both had got used to the eight hours' work,
and I told them all that I proposed to try as an
experiment to run this mill, for the next four
months, at only eight hours' time. This meant,
you see, beginning after it was broad daylight, and
ending at sundown, or sometimes before. We
made the saving in oil, which is something; we
made some saving, I suppose, though not much,
in fuel ; and the people made a great deal of sav
ing, in temper. I lost some workmen, — there is
no doubt of that. They went off where they could
get more money ; for practically, all our people are
paid by the piece, and of course a man cannot
make so many pieces of woollen cloth in forty-
eight hours as he can in sixty. It is all nonsense
to pretend that he can. But he makes more than
forty-eight sixtieths; he makes more than eight
tenths of it. When his mind is set to it, and he is
determined to drive things, and he has time to
keep his machinery in good order, and does not
mind staying a little before and after work to see
to that, his eight hours are worth more to him than
when he is in a hurry to leave his work as soon as
it is done, and is only eager to come in late in
the morning. You will say that this is an advan
tage which wears off after people have been used
to the eight-hour system. All I can say is, it does
not wear off with us. On the other hand, we find

352 How They Lived in Hampton

that these people regard their machinery a good
deal as you regard a horse which has got to do so
much work for you. You would like to have the
horse in as good order as he can be in, and even
if you have to take care of him yourself, you would
rather do that than have him fail you when you
are in the saddle or going over the hills.

"What we have settled down on, then, is eight
hours' time from the first of November to the first
of March every year, and during that period we
give a full hour for dinner. I do not say that the
people would like it all the year round. I think
that in the summer men would have a feeling that
they were wasting time, and that they would leave
us, and go off to places where they could get more
money in the day or more money in the week.
But the human mind is so formed that people do
like variety. It is just as a woman wants to move
her bedstead once in six months, and is sure
she makes more room every time she moves it.
These people are glad when the first of November
comes and the hours of work are radically changed ;
and they are just as glad when the first of March
comes, and they are changed again. It gives us,
as you will see, a good chance for our evening
school, of which we make a good deal; and it
gives a good chance for our evening entertain
ments, which are very good for keeping up the
moral life of the people. It throws men more into
the library and reading-room than it would if they
were tired, and, in short, I think it a very good

Hours of Work 353

arrangement for the summer, and I am disposed
to think that the men agree with me.

" I wonder if you remember a droll paper there
is of Franklin's, about his discovering that it was
light in Paris three or four hours before people got
out of bed. I remember a man I knew, who went
to Spain on business, told me how much surprised,
not to say amused, he was when he saw, in the
city of Madrid, the masons were at work before
five o'clock in the morning, on a house opposite
his hotel ; and he saw the other side of it when he
saw that the same masons did not touch a brick
between half-past eleven in the middle of the day
and half-past three. Well, if you turn out with
fifty or sixty people, as I have done again and
again now for years, at four o'clock in the morn
ing, just when a few streaks are beginning to light
up the eastern sky, it may be, and go into the mill
with those people, and all get to work just as it is
beginning to be light enough to go to work, you
have a little that same feeling that my friend had
in Spain; you have a little of the feeling that
Franklin describes in this paper. You are a little
surprised to know that you are at work when half
the world is asleep, and you do not dislike the sur
prise. Least of all do you dislike it when, at twelve
o'clock, somebody else comes in and takes your
work. You have the liberty of a marquis, or a
duke, or anybody else. You can go to sleep if you
want to ; you can read ; you can go a-fishing. I
dare say you have met some of my men with their

23

354 How They Lived in Hampton

baskets and flies upon the streams that you have
been tracking. It does the man no harm, you
may be sure of that ; and he comes home, with his
feet wet, if you please, and pretty tired, quite
ready to go to bed at sundown, or before sundown,
that he may be at his work at four in the morning.
" There is no doubt that with the men and the
women too, the early-rising watch, for that is
what we call them, is the more agreeable of the
two ; so we change and change about when Sunday
comes. Watch A, as it is called on our books,
has the morning work for one week, and it takes
the afternoon work in the next week. Then, when
the third week comes, Watch A has the morning
again, and in the fourth week it has the afternoon
again, and we did not change this order of watches
from the beginning of the season till the end. But
as to the men and women in the watches, they
have a good deal of liberty. They have what they
call their partners ; by which I mean that two
people, as I have said, are in some sort responsible
for the same frame or the same loom, and if one
of those partners wants a half-day off, and makes a
bargain with his partner to run for him, we wink
at it, if you choose to call it ' wink at it ; ' we
know perfectly well that it is done, and once in
a long while we permit that substitution. I
should not, if I were the head of a room, permit
it two days running. Sixteen hours' work is
quite too much to be done two days, unless
there is to be a holiday the next day. But, as

Hours of Work 355

you know, the work at a frame or at a loom is
not so much physical fatigue as it is a certain
kind of nervous work; and once in a dog's age
such a thing as this may be permitted, though
it should never be encouraged. Now all this, as
you will see, links in with, and has direct refer
ence to, the system of schooling which we have
adopted here, which is, after all, largely bor
rowed from the English experience, and about
which you had better talk with the young women
who keep the schools.

" It is easy to see how the footings come out
from these rather varied hours. 104 days of
winter, at 8 hours each, give 832 hours' work.

" For the eight months of spring, summer, and
autumn, the mills do twice as much a day, and
the result, of course, of the eight months, is four
times that of the winter, or 832 X 4, equals 3,328.

" This makes 4,160 hours' work in a year, against
3,100 hours which we should have gained from 310
days' work on a ten-hour system.

" The law of this State restricts us to ten hours,
and if it did not, the fact that other States are
restricted to ten hours would have amounted to
the same thing. In the long run, you cannot keep
good workmen in an eleven-hour mill, when, by
going over the border, they have a chance to work
in a ten-hour mill. It is that which practically
settles these questions, though there eari be, of
course, under our constitution, no national legisla
tion on the subject.

356 How They Lived in Hampton

" It ought to be understood, indeed, that no
State constitution gives any right to the legisla
ture to fix the hours of labor for any man. The
arrangements for ten-hour systems, or other such
systems, are made practically by legislation for
the benefit of children, with regard to whom it
is supposed that the legislature is omnipotent.
When an eight-hour law is passed, as it has
been passed, by Congress, it is simply a law pro
viding that men who work for the government
shall work only for eight hours in every twenty-
four. But the Bill of Rights in most States would
be enough to show that a legislature must not
interfere with the right of a man to sell in market
his own labor, and as much of it as he chooses.
I say this merely by the way. It is not of any
great practical effect, because, practically, most
mills want to employ persons who are under age,
and if those persons may, or indeed must, go away
at the end of ten hours, the work of the mill is so
far deranged that it cannot be continued for eleven
hours. This is the whole of our ten-hour statutes,
and indeed the same is true with regard to those
in England.

" But, as I have said, our arrangements here
were wholly independent of statute. They grew
up in the incidental way which I have described,
but which, for us who want to make the most
out of this plant here, — that is, out of these
buildings and this machinery, — is, as you can
see, very great. We gain thirty-three per cent in

Hours of Work 357

product out of the same amount of machinery.
Our work-people are satisfied, and if they are
satisfied, everybody is satisfied. We pay by the
piece, as all mills do, so that we pay no more
for three thousand hours' work on our time cal
endar than if we were carrying the same three
thousand hours over more months in the year.

" Practically, then, we are able to deliver more
goods in a year than we were able to, or than
we should be, if we worked on a ten-hour sys
tem. We are also using our machinery, not to
the full top of its work, but for one third more
than we should be otherwise, and this gives us
so far forth a better chance to be even with the
time. It is a great thing for any manufacturer
to work with the newest machinery which the
progress of invention affords, and other things
being equal, there is therefore a certain advan
tage in wearing out a frame or a loom in three
years which otherwise would have run four."

CHAPTER IX

THE CHURCH

SUNDAY came around while I was at Hampton,
and I went to church with Mr. Spinner, his
wife and family. He told me at breakfast that we
should hear the Baptist minister from Wentworth,
who was coming up to take the morning service
himself. Mr. Spinner spoke with pleasure of this
arrangement, for he said I should be pleased with
the sermon and the service, and he hoped that
this gentleman would come first and dine with us.
" He has not been here," said Mr. Spinner, " for a
year or two, and I should be glad to show him
some of our improvements. He is a man who is
much liked in the whole county, and it is rather a
matter of distinction that we should have him at
our little church here."

He then told me of the basis on which the
church had arranged itself, and seemed to be, on
the whole, well pleased that they had been able to
do as much as they had done, although they had
met with the difficulties inevitable where there are
people coming and going all the time, where many
of the men and women are, if not irreligious, quite

The Church 359

indifferent to religious arrangements, and where
the whole community is so small that unless it
unite together in some way it is difficult to main
tain any regular church institution.

" When we came here," he said, " there was no
place of worship here at all. There is a Second-
Advent meeting-house three or four miles down
the road, and I think you may have noticed, as you
went up, a meeting-house which is almost never
used, which was built by some Seventh-Day Baptist
people several years ago, when they had a revival
in this neighborhood. But they all moved away,
and I hardly know whether their house is kept in
repair or not. At all events, it was too far away
from us for us to make any use of it. In truth,
one of the reasons of the failure of the enterprise
that was here before us was that our village was
not large enough to maintain a church. The more
decent workmen would not come to a place where
there was no church, and they had but a wretched
set of hands here at the very best. The quality of
their work-people alone was enough to break down
their mills, if they had not broken down from bad
management, as in fact they did. After we were
established here, the better men, themselves, felt
the need of doing something for a Sunday-school or
a place of worship, in many instances where they
had never cared for such things before. Nothing
puts a man so much on his mettle as being bodily
transplanted, and finding that there is no regular
occupation for Sunday, even if he have not been a

360 How They Lived in Hampton

regular church member himself, and affects to be
indifferent to such things. The Catholic priest at
Wentworth was quite willing to come up and hear
confessions, and carry on a service once a month,
and he did so in the school-building, which the
district committee were willing to let him have for
this purpose. Different men put themselves into
communication with one and another of the minis
ters at Wentworth, to know whether some service
could not be maintained, perhaps on Sunday even
ing, or perhaps in the afternoon, by one and
another person coming up the valley from there.
To these proposals we had all sorts of answers, as
one always would in such a case, but it seemed to
me that there was enough of a necessity made out
for me to address a pretty formal letter to Mr.
Nourse on the subject, and that letter I accordingly
wrote.

" I told him that it was essential to a good manu
facturing establishment to have the best workmen
and not the worst. I told him that we should
never have the more decent and self-respecting
workmen if there were these difficulties about
worship. I told him that it seemed to me, there
fore, that the men who owned this mill — and he
was the most important of those men — should add
to the rest of their plant here a church or meeting
house. That would show the men that they
employed that they had an interest in this matter.
For the rest, the men they employed must bear
out the American principle, and must arrange for

The Church 361

worship as best they could ; but that I thought
that, without analyzing the matter too finely, or
putting too fine a point upon things, it was the
business of capital to provide a place where this
part of the work of a manufacturing town should
be carried on.

" I got a very curious answer from Nourse. I
should like to show it to you. He reminded me
of the principle which had been laid down in the
beginning ; namely, that capital was to have merely
what we would call ' the idiot's dividend/ and that
in a certain sense it was entitled to that, while in a
certain sense it was not entitled to anything more.
' Now/ said he, ' we have waived all questions of
sentiment or mutual affection or of the interest of
mankind, which you choose now to bring up when
you discuss the matter of a church edifice. I do
not mean to say that if, half an hour hence, a man
comes into my room and takes off his hat and
asks me to subscribe for building a church in
Honolulu or in Texas, I may not do it ; but I do
not think that that man must come to me from
Hampton. In Hampton I am engaged in a busi
ness enterprise. I have been told that this busi
ness enterprise could pay me what we call the
idiot's dividend. I feel safe, therefore, about refus
ing to mix up a business enterprise like this with
my philanthropy. If you, and the men who are at
work with you, really think that a church is as
much a part of the capital stock of this con
cern as is the dyeing vat, you ought to prove

362 How They Lived in Hampton

this by your works. I own some dyeing vats in
your mills, or I own ninety-five hundredths of
them, and on my property in those vats I am paid
four per cent interest. I will put up for you in
Hampton a meeting-house on exactly those terms.
It shall be costly or inexpensive, as you please.
It shall be a handsome church, built of your own
stone there, by the best architect in New York, or
it shall be built of rough-hewn planks, slabs, and
shingles, just as you please. It shall cost fifty
thousand dollars, or it shall cost five hundred, just
as you please ; but the congregation that worship
in it on Sunday, and the people who use it for
other services on week days, shall pay me the
idiot's dividend, or shall pay the proprietors a
dividend, exactly as they pay them on the dye
ing vats.'

" He said we might keep this offer open for two
months, and he would be bound by it at the end
of the time.

" I read this aloud at a meeting which we held
in the store to consider it. All the men were
pleased with it, or almost all of them were. They
said it meant business, and they were rather flat
tered by the half confidence that it placed in them.
They appointed a committee to go to Wentworth
and Tenterden. Eventually, the committee went
as far as New Haven to see some plans, and it
all ended in our building this place which we are
going to to-day. We got a plan from the Meth
odists; they publish some very good plans and

The Church 363

some very cheap plans, and we never had to pay
an architect a cent, because they furnished us,
very good-naturedly, the plan which we have
adopted. The building was made from our lum
ber here, and it cost a little inside of three thou
sand dollars. It stands on our books as having cost
twenty-nine hundred dollars. In this case we pay
the idiot's dividend, exactly as we pay it on the
other capital stock of the concern. In fact, it is
an enlargement of the capital stock by twenty-
nine hundred dollars, and Mr. Nourse owns the
whole of this, whereas he only owns ninety-five
per cent of the rest of the stock. You see, then,
that whoever occupies this church has to pay one
hundred and sixteen dollars a year for rent to him.
They also have to pay something — not much —
for its insurance. One hundred and sixteen dol
lars a year is rather more than two dollars a week ;
and the committee who had it in charge deter
mined very soon that the rent of the church and
of the vestry, for any and every purpose for which
it was used, should be one dollar a day. They
thought, and it has proved that they thought
rightly, that they should be almost certain of rent
ing the church fifty-two times in the year for
Sunday services. Thus they would have fifty-two
dollars. Then they thought, and as it proved they
thought rightly, that there would be so many
occasions when the vestry was wanted for a public
hall, as you saw it was wanted the other night
when they had the entertainment there, that they

364 How They Lived in Hampton

should get from that sixty or seventy dollars more.
In point of fact, they have always had enough to
keep the building in repair, keep it warm, and to
pay for their lights in the evening. The occupa
tion evenings costs a little more than the occu
pation on Sunday, because the lights have to be
provided for; but we have water power running
to waste here, so that since we got in our electric
plant, the light really costs them very little, and
indeed, blessings to kerosene, it never cost them
a great deal."

Accordingly, when Sunday afternoon came, the
family mustered in great force for the service.
Mr. Sherlock arrived late — but came. I had
gone with the children and my host himself to a
Sunday-school in the morning, which was largely
attended by grown people as well as children, and
required the use of many parts of the church
itself, as well as of the large and small rooms in
the vestry. Spinner explained to me as we went,
that for a service with a sermon all the committees
found it more convenient, as they had no settled
minister, to take the afternoon, or, as on this occa
sion, the afternoon and the evening. For, with
this arrangement, they could often secure the
presence and service of clergymen whom they
liked to hear, from the large towns in the neigh
borhood, who could not arrange to be absent from
their own pulpits in the morning. This Mr. Sher
lock, who was to preach, was a general favorite.
He would not have come to them at all, however,

The Church 365

had he been needed in the morning, for he was
then engaged in the service of his own church.

Spinner's son George and his daughter Pru
dence had both been trained, as it proved, to write
in shorthand, and they told me that they had notes
of most of the sermons which had been preached
in the church now for two or three years. When
I found that Mr. Sherlock spoke without a manu
script, I was glad that the young people were pre
serving his sermon. For thus I was able to bring
away what is a good report of it, which I made
them write out for me. I copy it here, because
he had caught, very thoroughly, the notion which
was at the bottom of the various plans at Hamp
ton, and the sermon states some principles of that
notion, as I may not succeed in stating them
elsewhere.

The text was : " Bear ye one another's burdens,
and so fulfil the law of Christ."

I think you must have noticed, when I read the New
Testament lesson, that in the same appeal Paul bids
every man bear his own burden. It is almost in one
breath that he says that every man must bear his own
burden and that every man must bear his brother's bur
den. Now it will not do for a moment to suppose that
this is a matter of thoughtless rhetoric, — or that these
two injunctions may be separated out from each other,
and taken each for itself alone. You will not find any
thoughtless rhetoric in this man's injunctions, — no, not
when he is in the highest heaven. This man Paul is a
master of life. He understood the great science of living,

366 How They Lived in Hampton

through and through. Because he understands it, —
because he knows what he is talking about, — though he
has only a few years for his work, — though he goes
from place to place, now as a prisoner, now as a travel
ling tent-maker, — he changes all Europe from what it
was to what it is. He makes the Western World over,
because he has the practical power to inspire it with the
Divine Life. Such a man does not talk by accident, or
for immediate effect. He has a principle beneath every
word he uses. And you and I must not take one of his
practical injunctions without allying it with the others,
and studying them together.

You will find, then, all through, that this great leader
of men speaks as a workman speaks to other workmen.
He tells us always, — what in one central text he says in
one epigram, — that we are fellow-workmen together with
God. As the Saviour had said, "My father worketh
hitherto, and I work." Paul takes it for granted that all
who make any claim to take the Saviour's name mean to
work in the world into which they were born. They
are not to dream out their salvation, nor to talk their
salvation into each other, nor to argue it out, nor to
buy it with a great price, — they are to work it out. He
speaks as a workman to workmen. And he takes care
all along that they shall know that he is a workman, and
that he is not ashamed of his work. " Mine own hands
ministered to my necessities," he says, and never fails to
remind them that, by example of daily industry, he has
illustrated what he means, when he says so quaintly,
and even sharply, that every man must mind his own
business.

Speaking in this way, as a man who knows what work
is, who has been bred to a good trade at which he can

The Church 367

earn a living, Paul, the most practical of leaders of men,
is engaged in this chapter in telling these people the
wonders of the great word " Together ; " how this little
handful of men is to rule and govern the world, because
no man is alone, but We act, — made perfect in union,
or, as the Saviour said, made perfect in one. Of this
instruction, the text is the central statement, as you saw
when I read the passage. But he is wholly determined
that each man shall know his personal responsibility. No
man is to undertake that vague, smoky, general, noisy
philanthropy, which disgraces the word philanthropy, —
in which a religious tramp announces that he will save the
world, when he cannot say what is his own special place
and part in the world's salvation. Paul will not let any
man think he can sing well enough to sing in the chorus,
unless he can sing well enough when it is his place to
sing a solo. And no man is to come to him and say,
" Paul, I should like a commission to go out into the
world and reform the world, and quicken it with a new
life," unless that man can show Paul that he has a work
of his own that he can do, — has a place of his own that
he fills well, — or as he puts it in better words, unless this
man shows that he can bear his own burden.

No sceptic or scoffer made any point by turning on
Paul after one of his addresses, to say, " Who are you to
be lecturing us about industry, or sobriety, or patience in
work ? You are hearing your own voice, and you like to
hear it. Try hard work, and see how you like that."
No man said that to Paul, for they knew what the answer
would be. "Who am I? I am a tent-maker. Come
down to Narrow Street, and see if there is better tent-
cloth in Corinth than I have there, — or if there is a
better shelter-tent than I made yesterday." He knew

368 How They Lived in Hampton

how to bear his own burden, and so he knew how to bear
the burdens of the world.

I will take another occasion, if your committee are so
good as to ask me to Hampton again, to show by sepa
rate passages from Paul's letters how distinct is the in
struction he gives to any young workingman who wants
to succeed, and means to succeed, as to the method of
his daily life. He does not simply say that every man
shall bear his own burden, but, in one practical instruction
and another, he shows him how. But not to-day. Our
business to-day is with the other text : how a man shall
do his part as a member of the common family — what
people now call the community. How shall a man show
his public spirit — do his share in the public or common
life ? How and where shall a Christian man appear as a
good citizen of the State or as a good member of the
Church?

First, and very briefly, because this is to be the whole
subject of that other sermon, — let him know how to do
his own work well. Let him be no pretender. How
shall he offer himself for the world's service, if his own
house is not in order? I am greatly interested in the
men and women who help Paul. There is a man of
whom we know nothing but that he was once Paul's
amanuensis, and that Paul was fond of him. " I, Tertius,
who wrote this epistle," he says with a certain pride.
There was a man who knew how to write. He knew
how to spell well. Paul was troubled with his weak eyes,
they say, and was glad when Tertius volunteered. But he
would not have been glad had Tertius been a pretender,
— if he wrote a careless hand, or if his Greek grammar
was bad, or if he spelled badly. In truth, Tertius knew

The Church 369

how to write as well as Paul knew how to make tents.
He wrote well, — well enough to make the first draft of
the letter to the Romans. And his name is presented to
every man who has his Bible, as the name of a faithful
fellow, who has served mankind, for century after cen
tury, through all time, because he knew how to do one
thing well, and because he was willing to consecrate that
talent to the common weal.

Now keep that example in mind all along. Then you
can carry into the notion of common work, — the work
of the Common Weal, or, as Paul would say, of the
Kingdom of God, — this first necessity that it is clean
work, work well done. It is not slop-work. It is
good journey-work, as our fathers used to say. Take
for a second thought the eternal truth which Paul falls
back to so eagerly, — that, if one member be alive and
strong, the whole body will have a better chance to be
alive and strong. Once and again he falls back upon
that fable which the Roman senator addressed to the
Roman people, — the body cannot be well unless each
hand and eye and foot is well. Life in the parts, —
quick, tingling life, — so that there may be life in the
whole, — vigorous, strong, eternal.

How many men I have known, — how many men you
have known, — who had even gained for themselves a
sort of public reputation for this care of the business of
the community, who have so utterly neglected Paul's
personal directions that they cannot take any care of their
own. Such a man, by some political turn, is appointed
a consul abroad, or a secretary of legation. He studies
international affairs, he devotes himself to the public busi
ness in these lines. By and by, there is a political over
turn at home, and the government will not renew his

24

370 How They Lived in Hampton

commission. He has to come home. He is apt to
complain that he is left out in the cold. Then you
begin to ask what he is fit for ; " What did he do when
he was at home?" That was the question which the
Connecticut farmer asked the French marshal, Rocham-
beau. And you find that at home he did nothing but
manage primary meetings and attend county conventions,
and, in other fashions, take care of elections. He has no
trade or calling in which he was a master. I suppose
this to be what Paul would have called failing to bear
his own burden. What follows ? Why, when the coun
try, wisely or unwisely, turns him out from its service,
there is, alas ! no place left where he is to fall.

But I do not mean to speak slightly of what this man
has done in attending primary meetings, in going to
county conventions, and in preparing for elections. I
hope no man hears me who does not go to primary meet
ings and who is not willing to take his share of duty in
county conventions, and who does not diligently and
with prayer prepare for every election of the town or of
the State. I do say, that no men can rightly attend, even
to such little public duties as that, and that no man can
have the power in such service that a man should seek,
who has not shown that he can wisely and well mind his
own business, keep his own accounts, pay his own debts,
stay out of debt, and earn an honorable reputation as a
manly workman.

Such a man as that has flung away his life in trying to
care for the State, while he cannot show that there is one
part of its separate duties that he can do well. He can
not bear his own burdens, because he has all his life
thought he was bearing other people's. Alas ! the other
people do not agree with him ! They think he never bore

The Church 371

theirs. And this I say only by illustration. I have to
speak of what affects us here more directly. I have to
speak of the welfare of the Church of Christ, as an organ
ized institution. And I am not speaking of this particular
church of yours, — or, may I say, yours and ours ? For I
do not know you personally as well as I wish I did, and
so I have no knowledge from which I can speak person
ally of your affairs. But, in many churches — and a pity
it is to have to say so — there are brethren, yes, and there
are sisters, who are prominent in the business of the
Church as a church, who cannot take care of their own
business. It seems as if they took the time for the affairs
of the organization which they would have better spent
on their own affairs. Or, looking the other way, it seems
as if, because they found nothing to do in their own
business, they thought they would undertake the Master's
business rather than do nothing. Now he wants no such
recruits. He wants whole men and whole women. He
wants those who can do a good day's work, and do it
well. He wants those who have been faithful in few
things, — and it is those, and those only, whom he pro
motes to the charge of many things. It is the faithful,
industrious, yes, and successful saint, who has used the
talent which was given him, who has rightly and well
handled the pound intrusted to him, to whom there
comes, to surprise his modesty, that noblest welcome
ever spoken, "Enter thou into the joy of thy Lord."
And no man can pretend to tell what is the injury which
has been inflicted on the Church by the profane interfer
ence in the work it has to do, of those whom men saw
incapable of doing their own work. Their words are
vain ; their appeals are vain ; their counsels are vain ; —
because men judge them by their fruits. They have not

372 How They Lived in Hampton

borne their own burdens well, and so it is that, in this
most important affair of all, it is certain that they cannot
bear their brothers'.

Now, by the side of that failure, — of the man whom I
described just now, the man who put his trust in princes,
and found princes failed him, — I will tell you the story
of another failure. It is the man who stitches and
hammers at shoes on his bench, — ten, twelve hours a
day, perhaps, — or who stands behind his counter from
early morning till late evening, or who drudges in the
same self-imposed slavery at the forge or the grindstone,
and does nothing else, does nothing larger. He does
not bear his brother's burdens. He does not care for
the common weal. He will let his children go to the
public school ; but he will not serve on the district com
mittee. He will let his wife take a book from the public
library; but he will not be a trustee or a director. He
is willing to walk on the sidewalk and drive on the road ;
but he will not be a county commissioner, or a selectman,
or a roadmaster. He is willing to have the government
bring him his letters and his newspapers, and to pay for
that service not half what it costs ; but he is not willing
to go to an election, or to compel the right choice so far
as his power goes. "He does not care for politics."
^Esop would have been glad to put such a man in a fable.
But even ALsop could not find a fox or a hedgehog who
was so mean. This is the man who tells you, " I care
for nobody, — no, not I!" — and he deserves to have
the other half of the song come true, which says that
"nobody cares for me."

Mr. Sherlock made a long pause after this
description of selfishness, and then, addressing

The Church 373

himself personally to the men in front of him, he
said : —

I say all this here because I think you workmen at
Hampton have even more distinct duties in these lines
than the general run of workmen in America. I declare
to you, that I think this system of manufacture which you
have started here is going to stand or fall, to succeed or
to fail, according to the answers which the men in this
church now — the hundred and fifty of you who are
workers and voters and thinkers — make to these two
demands of Paul. You have started a system in which
the workman is the capitalist in part, and in which the
workman shares as he ought to share in the ups and
downs of every honorable adventure. There is no act of
Congress or of Parliament that any man should grow rich.
There is a promise of the Eternal God that the community
which lives by his law, and seeks him, shall find him.
More than this — he has said that the community which
seeks him and finds his Kingdom, shall have these little
things, such as meat and drink and clothing ; they shall
be added, he has said, to his other infinite compensations.
But this community must live by his law. It must obey
him. It must be part of his Kingdom. He must be
King. No man in it shall live for himself. They must
live for the common good. Every man in it must bear
his own burden. But every man also must bear his
brother's. I say, that on your success here will it depend
whether other mill-owners will try the same venture,
whether other workmen will have the same opportunity.
I say you will succeed if the very men who hear me are
willing to count themselves, not as lonely men, but as
brothers in the great brotherhood, — as fellow-soldiers in

374 How They Lived in Hampton

Christ's army. I do not know if you thought of this when
you began. I think perhaps you builded better than you
knew. But this I know — and you will learn — that your
enterprise will succeed as fast and as far as every workman
in it works as a fellow- workman with God, and so is will
ing and ready to do his share of the building of God's
Kingdom in the world.

CHAPTER X

THE PUBLIC LIBRARY

I HAD seen in the co-operative store that they
had made all the arrangements for a reading-
room, and that they had a very small collection of
books of reference which they used there. They
said that they had had a more extensive collection
of books, but that when the library was founded
their books went in with the others into that collec
tion. This led me to inquire about the library the
next morning from my friend, and he sent one of
his children with me that afternoon to see it, and
to talk with the librarian. The library was in a
separate house, which they told me had been a
dye-house in the old mill, but which had been
taken possession of for this purpose, when the
new dye-house was built under the direction of the
present company. I found that the pecuniary
arrangement of the library was precisely the same
as that made for the church. This old dye-house
had been valued. The house was worth, at the
time they took possession of it, $475, and they paid
a rent of four per cent to the proprietors of the
mill for the use of it. Indeed, I found on talking

376 How They Lived in Hampton

to one or two of the men and several of the women,
that they all understood that it was better on every
account that they should maintain the library
themselves, and that it should not be counted as
an eleemosynary institution or an institution which
other people founded for them. I had no doubt,
from my experience with some other institutions
elsewhere, that it was much more than worth the
trifle which they paid for rent to be able to diffuse
the feeling among all the young people, and what
I may call the outsiders, that they bought these
books themselves for themselves, and that nobody
was trying to stuff down their throats a particular
literature selected by some higher power. Indeed,
the first step in the institution of the library, large
or small, is apt to be a false one, and its falseness is
in this direction, — of condescension. The founder
of the library has given ten thousand dollars, and
he thinks, and probably thinks correctly, that he
knows better than the people who are to read it
what they had better read. He is right in thinking
that he knows better than they do. But he is
wrong in thinking that he can make them read
books which they do not want to read.

Now, exactly as in the co-operative store the
store began to succeed when they gave the pur
chasers an equal share in the profit, so in the
library, the library begins to succeed when the
readers begin to understand that it is, in good
faith, their library, and not the library that some
body else has made for them. You may use any

The Public Library 377

amount of moral suasion you choose in persuading
them to read good books instead of bad books.
In the long run they will find that a good book is
better than a bad one, as indeed its name would
seem to imply. But you are not going to make
them read books because certain other people of
an education different from their own had read
them and say they ought to be read.

The most striking instance I ever knew of the
infelicity of letting one set of people buy books
for another is in the story told of a state govern
ment, in old times, which used to send to the same
publisher annually, for so many thousand dollars'
worth of books for the state library. Poor human
nature is so weak that they say he could not resist
the temptation of clearing off, every year, so much
of his stock which the rest of the purchasing world
had not chosen to buy. Now those books which
he sent were undoubtedly good books, well printed
and well bound. But, after all, the use of a book
is to be read. Indeed, the sooner it is read to
pieces, the better. For you can certainly get
another copy, and you know then that it has ful
filled its mission. The danger and the vice of
librarians is, that they are apt to think that it is
important that their books should be kept on the
shelves. Now, on the other hand, they should re
gard themselves as doing a duty exactly like that
of the directors or cashiers of banks, whose busi
ness it is to keep the money of the stockholders in
active circulation, to know where it is, and to be

378 How They Lived in Hampton

able to recall it at the proper times, and by no
means to lock up all their capital stock in their
vaults, of no use to any one.

The public library at Hampton was not above
receiving gifts, however, after it was organized. In
point of fact, Mr. Nourse made it some very hand
some gifts. As Mr. Spinner had told me, he was
a great traveller, and he had formed a habit, when
he was in any distant city, of sending to them such
books as would illustrate the history or customs of
the country in which he was, if he could find them
in English. And he went beyond his rule sometimes
when he could send good illustrated books, though
they were in other languages. Still, as Miss Jane
Stevens had said of her little library, — the prin
cipal support of the library was from the people
themselves. The committee which directed it was
a sub-committee of the government of the store,
and with every return at the annual meeting of the
stockholders, and other persons interested in the
stock, they voted a larger and larger sum towards
library expenses. They engaged a young woman
to keep the library open every evening at first, and
eventually it was kept open all the time in winter
when the mills were not running. This made a
very long evening.

I have had a good deal to do with such things in
different places, and I looked with a good deal of
interest through the shelves, and afterwards over
the printed catalogue, to see what class of books
they had chosen to buy. I was not surprised to

The Public Library 379

find a very large proportion of children's books.
Then there was a quite considerable branch of
books of natural history, and I found, on inquir
ing, that the interest in these studies was due to
Miss Jane Stevens herself. She had a boy come
in one night to her schoolroom who wanted a
book, and she had the good sense to show one
of Mr. Nourse's elegant books of illustration, which
was, as it happened, a series of butterflies and other
insects which had been collected in South Amer
ica. She told the boy that he and his companion
might look at the book there if they would be care
ful. But then she asked if they would not like to
know something about butterflies, and perhaps to
collect butterflies, and put into their hands a little
English book not above them, which had some
curious studies on the habits of caterpillars, moths,
and butterflies. The next Saturday afternoon they
started out, four or five of them, with a butterfly
net, and the result was quite a little collection.
She taught some of the girls how to make cages
in which caterpillars could spin their cocoons.
She taught some of them how to make for them
selves little books in which, as well as they could,
they drew pictures of the growth of the grub from
the egg, representing him every three days, in fact,
till he advanced to his full size. Boys and girls
took up the new study with a great deal of enthu
siasm, and the result was that there was a great de
mand for all the " butterfly books," as they called
them, which Miss Stevens had in store ; and the

380 How They Lived in Hampton

committee, of course, were glad, as far as their
means went, to let her buy more. As soon as Mr.
Nourse heard this, he was well pleased. One of
the girls had made a particularly pretty book of
studies, and had gone so far as to color her cater
pillars neatly. This was sent to Mr. Nourse as a
Christmas present. He was very much pleased,
and, from that time, kept his eye on the catalogues
and advertisements, and supplied the little collec
tion with popular books ; and, indeed, with some
books of a scientific value which would help the
children in these lines.

Miss Stevens told me of this story with a good
deal of interest, as, indeed, she might; and from
his own point of view, Spinner afterwards told me
the same story, to show that a study which could
never have been forced upon such a community as
this, introduced itself, as he said, if you were only
willing to begin at the right end.

I found that she was in correspondence with the
Hartford people, the Providence people, with Mr.
Bowker in New York, and that she kept the run of
what she wanted, in the way of publication and
library work, as well as the grandest of them do.
In short, she assured me, and so did Mr. Spinner,
that the library was now a very popular institution
in the place, and that there was no danger what
ever that the interest in it would fall away. They
lent very freely, but they enforced their rules reg
ularly ; and they were glad to extend their accom
modations for reading in the building itself, so as

The Public Library 381

to encourage all the young people to form habits
of reading where, of course, they could readily
consult books of reference.

Mr. Raikes, superintendent of the Sunday-school,
told me that the Sunday-school was a different
place and a different thing, now that he and the
other teachers could refer the older scholars to
such books as they ought to consult, and that he
was quite sure that when an intelligent teacher
made such a suggestion, the suggestion would be
followed up by application to Miss Stevens, or the
librarian, for the books referred to. She told me
that she made it a matter of course to have on
hand all the books required for reference by the
Chautauquan Reading Circle, and that they had,
every year, a large " home circle " of those readers,
who would have given her no peace if she had
not kept the library up to the intelligent requi
sitions which the Chautauquan system of reading
demands.

All this, however, it must be observed, was
absolutely democratic. The readers themselves
made the selection of books. They thought they
knew what they wanted, and if they made a mis
take the fault was their own.

CHAPTER XI

ENTERTAINMENT

HAMPTON made up the whole, or nearly the
whole, as has been said, of District No. 13,
in the township in which it belonged, so that the
management of its school fell almost entirely under
the oversight of a district committee, chosen by
the people themselves in their annual town-meet
ing. Such is the law of that State. A year or two
before I was there, some showman had come up
the valley with an exhibition, which had called
together, as most shows or concerts did, a consid
erable audience, and which had displeased the
leaders of the community. I should not think
they had been prudish or over-sensitive about it,
from what I heard. But Holmes, for instance,
said to me, very quietly, " It was not such a per
formance as I chose to take my wife and children
to see."

Now a good deal of money goes into the pockets
of the itinerant showmen, of various departments,
in a village as prosperous as this. And if I class
the purveyors of concerts, and the gentlemen and
ladies who deliver lectures among the showmen,

Entertainment 383

they must not be surprised. For certainly the
announcements, or the advertisements, sometimes
make it hard to distinguish between the entertain
ments proposed.

When there was any talk, serious or light, as to
the advantages or disadvantages of Hampton as a
place to live in, it was very apt to come round to
the discussion of the amusements which came
there, or which stayed away. Indeed, the great
problem of this day, and of the next generation, is
how the congestion of the large cities is to be
checked, and how the population of the country
can be increased. Whoever is interested in this
question, and means to do anything for its solu
tion, had best consider, first of all, the questions of
public amusement or entertainment. For there is
no use in proving to young people that they can
earn more wages in a healthy country village than
in a crowded unhealthy city, if they think the city
cheerful and gay or the country dull and stupid.
They do not crowd the cities because they think
they shall grow rich there, but because they want
an animated and crowded life. Wisely or un
wisely, they are tempted by the excitement of
crowds, of concerts, of bands, of theatres, of public
meetings, of processions, of exhibitions, of parties,
of clubs, or, in general, of society. Whoever will
take the trouble to listen to the conversation of
such young people, will see, in five minutes, that
the recollection of such excitements, or the hope of
partaking of them, is the inducement which leads

384 How They Lived in Hampton

them to seek city life, or which, after they have
sought it, leads them to remain in it, in spite of its
manifold hardships. Mrs. Helen Campbell has
painted a terrible picture, not exaggerated, not
overcolored in a single stroke, which portrays the
horrible sufferings of the handiworkers of her own
sex in the city of New York. But whoever asks
why those poor women remain there, in their ill-
requited toil, and why they do not go to live in
that country which God made, with its better
wages and its lighter work, learns at once that the
sufficient reason is that they want to stay, and do not
want to go. More than this, if any Aladdin should
lift fifty thousand of the poorest of them from their
wretched tenements to-night, and make of them
princesses and duchesses, their hard places in their
workshops would be filled before the week was
over by fifty thousand other girls who would gladly
come from the hillsides and valleys, which we
rightly say are better homes for them.

Whoever considers the problem thus presented,
and wants to relieve what we have called the con
gestion of life in the large cities, must do what he
can to increase the opportunities for entertain
ment, for amusement, yes, for excitement, so far
as it can reasonably be done, for those who live in
the country. It is a misfortune indeed that, from
the nature of the case, literature is misleading.
Books are generally printed in cities, and naturally
authors gather there. The leading newspapers
and magazines are, almost of necessity, published

Entertainment 385

in such cities. So far as they direct the opinion of
the young, there is an undercurrent or ground-note,
which suggests to the young reader that in cities
is to be found the governing influence of the world.
The suggestion is probably false, but it is none the
less seductive to inexperienced readers. Thus
Mr. Horace Greeley may say, " Go West, young
man," but the young man observes that Mr. Greeley
himself remains in New York, and naturally enough,
if he respects him, follows his example rather than
his instructions.

The leading people in the village of Hampton
knew perfectly well how strong was the undertow
of the tide which would carry away their young
people to larger manufacturing towns, or to great
commercial cities, if its constant sweep was not
steadily counteracted. It was after the almost
disgraceful public entertainment which has been
alluded to, that they took distinct measures, quite
systematically, to superintend the public entertain
ment by system ; and the people most interested in
this meant positive work, and not negative. " We
want to overcome evil with good," said Dick
Sheridan, a queer Irishman they had among them,
who, as it happened, took the oversight of this
business. A district school meeting in No. 9 was
not generally an affair which greatly interested the
younger voters, or the people generally. But on
the occasion alluded to, it had been generally re
ported in the shops and the different rooms that
Uncle Dick, as Sheridan was called, meant to make

25

386 How They Lived in Hampton

a speech. Such a thing was quite unheard of,
and the meeting was crowded with voters and
with spectators also, who had come to hear the
man who, though he was the wit or wag of the
village, was not generally interested in public
affairs.

When the meeting was well under way, Sheridan
rose, perfectly serious ; and an excellent speech he
made. He knew that the boys had come with the
idea that he would make fun for them, and he took
care that the boys should be disappointed. He
spoke with a good deal of feeling of the im
pression which the coarse and vulgar entertain
ment had made in the village. He said he did
not think any one in the village was to blame for
it, but, for one, he did not mean to have the young
people so insulted again if he could help it. He
said also that any one who knew him knew that he
had no wish to check legitimate fun or sport of any
kind. He had not come to this meeting with any
such idea. It was here that he used the quotation
from Saint Paul that has been cited, and said that
if they meant to abate such nuisances they must
overcome evil with good.

" That we may have," said he, " such advantage
as legal authority may give us in this matter, I
propose that the district committee, now to be
elected, be requested to take the supervision of
the public entertainments of this place as a part
of the public education. I know very well how
much and how little this vote may mean under the

Entertainment 387

law of this State. But I know, also, that it will
mean a great deal in this community if it is passed,
as I believe it will be, unanimously.

" My idea is, that instead of a district school
committee of three, such as we usually choose,
we shall this year make a committee of ten. I
propose that we re-elect the last year's committee
of three, and add to it three gentlemen and four
ladies. I propose that, besides the supervision of
our school, they communicate with the selectmen
of this town as to the persons who receive licenses
for public entertainment. If they approve, on the
whole, of such persons, all right. If they find an
other such case as that of these minstrels we had
here last month, why, they will say so to the
people who have halls to let here, and I do not
think that, when they have said so, anybody in this
town will let such a man a hall." Here there was
some applause. But Dick Sheridan went steadily
on. " But I do not mean to stop here." He
meant that this committee — and when he said
committee he really meant himself — should take
boldly and bodily the positive direction and provi
sion for the amusements of the place. He had
thought of this before a good deal, and was not
sorry to undertake to carry out some of his own
plans. He was quite clear that, with a little money
in hand, so that fit contracts could be made with
the right persons, he could induce performers or
artists of high character to come to Hampton for
the entertainment of the people. He did not even

388 How They Lived in Hampton

dare to show his own committee at first his plans
in detail, so bold were they. But he was one of
those men who has his eyes open to such things ;
he was constitutionally fond of public entertain
ment himself, and had never succeeded very well
in enjoying himself when he was all alone for four
or five hours in an evening, even if you gave him
the most entertaining books for company. He was
a social fellow, who liked to be in a crowd, and he
knew, almost by instinct, those people who, by
genius or education, were able to call such per
sons together. He said that there were good actors
who would give recitals and presentations, that
there were good artists who would draw amusing
or instructive pictures at sight for audiences, that
there were musicians, vocal or instrumental, who
were only waiting to be employed, and that the per
son who could control these people was a permanent
and official manager with a little money in his hand.
He said that this class of people were, of their very
nature, singularly poor business men ; he said that
if a business man met with them, he had them, so
to speak, at an advantage. Now Sheridan did not
want to cheat them ; he did want to pay them fair
wages for fair work ; and he wanted to entertain the
people of Hampton at the same time. All this he
had thought out himself. All this he knew he could
persuade his committee to try, or he thought he knew
it. And he made this speech with a view to having
that sort of authority given to him that he could
go forward with courage, and that nobody could

Entertainment 389

say that Dick Sheridan was putting himself into an
affair with which he had nothing to do.

So soon as Sheridan had spoken, my friend
Holmes, he of the cabbage and strawberries, spoke,
and to the same purpose, though in quite a different
way. I fancy that they had not had much to do with
each other before, and that it was rather a surprise,
perhaps an amusement to the youngsters present,
to see them advocating the same cause at the same
meeting. Holmes was recognized as a religious
man. He had a Bible-class on Sunday, and was,
I believe, thought strict in the charge of his chil
dren. Nobody ever called Dick Sheridan strict,
and, though he was a very decent member of the
community, as far as his daily manners and cus
toms went, nobody would have classed him among
distinctly religious men. If he was distinguished
for anything, it was for a tradition that he had
once been a pitcher in a celebrated ball club, and
that he always interested himself in the sports of
such clubs in Hampton and in Wentworth.

The motion, however, was no surprise to the
leader of the meeting, or to the fathers of families
who were interested in the schools. It had been
carefully arranged beforehand, in the home talk
which makes the genuine " preliminary meeting " in
New England politics, and, with little other discus
sion than has been described, it was passed unani
mously. The three district committeemen of the
last year were chosen again. To them were added
three men and four women, as Sheridan had pro-

39° How They Lived in Hampton

posed. He was one of the men, Holmes was an
other, and young Brahm, who was the first bass on
the glee club and president of the ball club, was
the third ; Miss Jane Stevens, who has been already
spoken of, was one of the women.

So soon as the committee was organized, it was
clear that Dick Sheridan " meant work." He was
in correspondence with this band and that quar
tette. He was away in New York for two or three
days, and there were even rumors that he had a
personal interview with Mr. Beecher, to persuade
him to come to Hampton to lecture. What he did,
and what he was said to do, kept the talkers of
Hampton busy for the next six weeks, and the
newspapers in Wentworth and Alton even took up
the story of the achievements of this committee.
What followed was, as he himself explained to me,
that never was there a course of entertainments so
well advertised as this first course of concerts,
lectures, and readings. " From that time, Mr.
Freeman," he said to me, "we were made. We
made on that one course, — oh, more than two hun
dred dollars clear profit, — just because it was a
new thing, and everybody was talking about us.
There is plenty of money spent on these things
always. The trouble is, that very little of it, in
comparison, goes to modest people, who will not
blow, and a great deal of it goes to liars and
tramps, who skin the business, and never mean
to come again.

"We had over two hundred dollars in hand.

Entertainment 3 9 1

We appointed a permanent trustee and treasurer
to keep it for us and to keep the accounts. Then,
you see, when I went to engage an orchestra, or a
quartette, or anybody, I could talk business. I
did not have to say that if the night were good
they would have so much, and if it were bad we
could only pay the expenses. I said ' twenty dol
lars,' or ' thirty dollars,' or ' fifty dollars,' or what
ever, and they knew I meant it. We controlled
the hall. All we had to pay for that — well, you
know about that — was light and heat, and our
per cent to Mr. Nourse on his plant. And then,
— well, these people are not fools ; they know a
good thing from a bad one; and all that was
needed was, that we should be able to make to
them fair proposals, to pay them money in advance,
if the poor fellows needed it, but, above all things,
to pay them on the nail, as soon as they had given
their entertainment."

Sheridan added, modestly enough, that there was
a good deal in approaching these people in the
right way. He said : " I might have stroked all
the fur back, and had them all dislike me. As it
stands, do you know, I think they like me better
than almost any person they have to deal with. I
have never cheated them, as some ' impresarios '
would have done, by making very large promises,
which they could never fulfil. I have never de
graded them by speaking as if I were hiring them
for some menial service. I have always seen that,
when they came here, they should be treated as

392 How They Lived in Hampton

well as a clergyman would be if he came here. I
have always made them understand that I consid
ered them as co-operating with the best people of
this place, for the highest interests of this place.
I have made it my business to see that they were
courteously and cordially treated by our best citi
zens when they were here, and I tried to make
Hampton so agreeable to them that they would
want to come again. The consequence is that they
like to come ; they will put themselves out of the
way to come here for me, even though I pay them
much less than they are paid in some other places.
You cannot, Mr. Freeman," he said, in conclusion,
" overestimate the advantage of dealing with au
thority in a permanent position, so that you can
look forward and remember the past as well, and,
above all things, the advantage of having some
money in the pocket."

I said, with some admiration of the man, that
they also had the great advantage of a stage
manager who did not want to be paid. Sheridan
laughed, and took the compliment good-naturedly.

" I like to see the thing well done. I had talked
about such a thing for years, and I meant to make
it succeed, now I had a chance. But the others
backed me up well. That little Miss Stevens, now,
— there 's a great deal more of her than you think
for. And then, the people themselves, they meant
to have it succeed. I tell you, it was Democracy
applied to Entertainment, just as the whole busi
ness here is Democracy applied to spinning and

Entertainment 393

weaving. The secret of Democracy in anything,
Mr. Freeman, is not any magic written down on a
sheet of paper, and called a constitution; it is
that everybody wants the machine to move, and so
makes it move, and does his share. That is just
what those people saw. They paid their money
freely, because they knew it was their concern.
They did not care for profit so much as they
cared for success.

"Well! I started from the first for variety.
And I never pretended to be instructive. I told
Miss Jane Stevens to keep her instruction at
school, — that she was to be made to laugh herself,
— that we were to entertain them. She 's no fool,
and she laughed and said that was all right, — and
she has been a real help, as I tell you. Variety, I
said, and all entertainment, and do not be too
grand. For the autumn and winter, we tried first
for two entertainments a week, and afterwards
for three. But we also tried not to interfere.
If they wanted, at the church, to have a lecture
or meeting or anything, they let us know in ad
vance, and we kept out of their way. ' Courses ? '
Oh, yes, — we have some courses. A good course
is a good thing. It is a mutual insurance, — a
good night takes care of a bad one, and a bright
speaker draws, if you have made a mistake and
engaged a dull one for another evening. But we
were not limited to courses. We kept our eyes
open, and our ears. If a man, or a troupe, or a
band, were coming to Wentworth or to Norwich,

394 How They Lived in Hampton

we let them understand that there was sure pay, if
not quite so much, if they would come round to us.
We would have them Monday, — that was all the
same to us. But perhaps you do not know that
Monday is a bad day for showmen generally."

In this way, partly because Mr. Sheridan and his
committee had the tclat of a new beginning, the
first season was very profitable, and the trustee-
treasurer had quite a sum in hand at the end of
the first winter. Then it was that, to the surprise
of every one, he announced a change of base, and
carried it in his committee. He proposed that
three fourths of this money should be spent for
the open-air entertainments of the summer. So
much help was to be given to the ball club and the
tennis club ; so much was to be spent for evening
concerts in the square. And, as the money was
everybody's money, it was agreed that a part of it
should be used to negotiate with the railroad com
panies, to provide for two all-day excursions, by
which those who started early and returned late
might have a long day at Sachem's Head, on the
Sound.

" In the end," Sheridan said, " the excursions
have not cost us one cent. I mean the people
have bought tickets enough to pay for the whole
thing. But it is with the railroad as it is with the
orchestras. They want a sure thing. They are
glad enough to sell me a train, and to sell it to me
low, if I have the money. But if it comes to ' if '
and ' perhaps,' — if they are to take the risk, —

Entertainment 395

why, they want the possible profit, as well as the
possible loss. So I never have offered them any
doubtful enterprise. I have said, ' I will take four
cars, or six,' as the case may be. And you can see
that, after one success, we are wellnigh sure. If
we were not sure, why, we have something in the
bank to fall back upon.

" Now," he said, " I am really well known among
the large fraternity of people who amuse and
entertain the rest of the world. The right sort
know me. They address me; I do not have to
hunt them up. They know the terms are cash
down, but they also know that we shall stand no
nonsense. In these last years we have had the
hall open nearly sixty times in three months, from
November first to February, and in the other
months almost as often. And we have had some
of the best talent in the country here. Two
secrets, Mr. Freeman, — cash on the nail and
constant variety. But we could never have had
the cash had it not been Democracy applied to
Entertainment."

This matter of public amusement or entertain
ment played so important a part in the social life
of this little community that we frequently came
round to it in conversation. From all my nearest
friends there I heard a good deal about the practical
working of their plans, and I satisfied myself that
Sheridan had not over-stated either their success
or their importance.

396 How They Lived in Hampton

In any such enterprise as this, the permanency
of the population is a matter to be very carefully
provided for. It is, indeed, quite essential that
the greater part of the community shall remain
where they are, shall maintain the local pride or
esprit de corps of the place, and that thus the works
shall train their own workmen, as Spinner once and
again said to me. In all that I had learned about
the store, I had seen that its success absolutely
depended on its freedom from any vagary of public
opinion, which should set any considerable number
of those who shared in it upon some emigration
project, for which they would want to withdraw, of
a sudden, their capital. The danger of removal
was distinctly visible here, but, as Holmes said
again and again, it was just as great in every other
relation of their life, and their success was always
just as much impaired by the " flitting " of good
hands, though the danger might not be so ap
parent upon the surface. " New men do not
care anything about you." " New hands take on
airs." " New hands spoil the machinery." " New
hands, — new ways." Such saws were repeated to
me again and again.

" I do not say," said Spinner, " that I want to
build up a community of my namesakes here,
or of weavers. I don't take much stock in Mr.
Atkinson's theory of the heredity of good weav
ing. However that may be, I want the boys and
girls to choose the calling that God made them
for, whatever that may be. But among those

Entertainment 397

callings open to them, is this of weaving good
woollen cloth. It is an honorable and profitable
way of serving the world, as honorable and
profitable as any. I do mean that my boys
and girls shall not be ashamed of their father's
business, and that if they use it, they shall carry
it on to advantage. They may go on a wander-
tour if they want to, as lads like to do, when their
time comes. But I want to have them come back
here, and I want to have this place as attractive as
any place they will find."

Substantially the same thing was said by the
other leaders of the little community. And they
were young enough themselves, and remembered
enough of their own youth, to know what would
make a town attractive to young people, and what
were the features of its life to which the memory
of a wanderer would return. They knew that its
social attractions would count for more than money
wages, and for more than any prospect, even, of
rapid promotion. To have " had a good time," as
the happy old English of Dryden's time put it, —
this is a thing which young people remember, and
to the renewal of it they look forward.

And I was well pleased one day to find that
Mr. Sherlock took the same view. He picked
me up, with my basket of fish, one day when he
was driving, and he talked to me very seriously
of all this. He told me that he had an excellent
set of young people in Hampton, and that he
ascribed that very much to the watchful care

398 How They Lived in Hampton

which had been kept, from the beginning almost,
over the public entertainments of the young.
"Lead us not into temptation" means a great
deal. And he declared that the temptations
opened to young life, in the carelessness which
too often neglects this matter in the cities and
towns of the country, seemed to him to be the
enemies of Christian life most frequent, most
subtle, and most to be dreaded. If he probed
to the bottom the history of the moral decline
and ruin of any young man or young woman, he
was most apt to find that in the good-natured
negligence in which parents had left boy or girl
to hear or to see this or that, which broke up
all early principles of purity, was to be found
the beginning of the difficulty. Sheridan was
right when he told the people to overcome evil
with good. There was nothing else to overcome
it with, and the field in which he was at work was
by no means insignificant.

CHAPTER XII

TEMPERANCE

WE were sitting in the counting-room one day,
when both Mr. Spinner and Mr. Workman
seemed to have finished their afternoon work, and
I asked them how they coped with the great devil
of all.

"You mean liquor." It was Workman who
replied. "Well, we try to overcome evil with
good. All the conditions are in our favor, and
we have had more success than I would have
dared to hope.

" In the first place, — well, I do not know as
you know I have the whole responsibility of the
help ; our friend Spinner does not interfere with
me there, — I will not have a drinking man or
woman on the premises."

" Plenty of them apply," said Spinner, groaning.
" Show Mr. Freeman that letter which you had
from Dr. Good — "

"No, I will not stop to show it to him. But
I will tell him. It was a letter begging me to
take a family here which was broken down because
the man could not keep from whiskey. Dr. Good

400 How They Lived in Hampton

had lectured here, he knew his friend could have
no whiskey here, and he wanted to send him to us
as to a hospital.

" I do not know what you will think, but I would
not take him, though I believe he understood his
business. I am not sure if I was right. I wrote
Dr. Good the best letter I could, but I did not
quite satisfy myself.

" But the ground I take is, that I must care first
for these children and young people on the
spot. I will not lead them into temptation, and
the difficulty is so tremendous that I will be on the
guard everywhere."

Workman spoke with so much feeling that I
have no doubt there was a skeleton somewhere in
his own house, reminding him of his duty in this
matter, as there is, indeed, in most houses.

" Literature is bad enough," he went on to say.
" The descriptions of drinking, as if it were the
crowning height of a man's life, the talk of wine, as
if it were the highest article of manufacture, —
and this in good books, which the young people
ought to read, — this makes a sort of mysterious
joy hang over the thing, which the devil must
delight in. The newspapers, as you know, are
quite unreliable about it. Read between the KneSj
and see if the man who reported Neal Dow did
not write out his notes in a bar-room. My boys
and girls have to meet all that, at the best. And
I did not want to have a man here who might
be devising plans to bring liquor in, or even going

Temperance 401

down to Wentworth with one of the young men
to see what they could find there.

" I run this mill as a place for the workingmen
and women first. After we have done this," he
said, laughing, " if we can turn out a few yards of
Hampton A No. i, why, I do so, because Spinner
there is so eager about it. But, on the whole,
that is of little consequence in comparison. And,
Mr. Freeman, when you can get Congress to
understand that the principal business they have
in hand, or any honest man, is that same affair, —
namely, that the people of this country shall be
decent men and women, living in happy homes, —
you will have made a great step. Your tariff leg
islation, all your revenue legislation, all your legis
lation on post-office and telegraph, for a little
instance, ought to turn on that, and that only.

" Well, to come back to your question. I think
all the conditions are in our favor, as I said. It
was a great thing that, for years, each man and
woman had to scrimp and save one quarter of his
wages really, — that is to say, was compelled to
save it, and to deposit it, instead of having it to
spend. That put us on a very economical style of
living at first, and whiskey must go, even tobacco
largely, because we had so little money, any of us.

" In the second place, almost all the leaders —
I mean the men with families, who would be apt to
stick fast and make up public sentiment — were
already total abstainers. This happened from the
law of selection. For nobody could well join us

26

402 How They Lived in Hampton

to go to work on three quarter wages, unless he
had something laid up in the bank. And a drink
ing man is not apt to have a large bank account.

"Then, so soon as we got on the eight-hour
time schedule, nobody had the plea, which is a
perfectly just plea, of exhaustion. No man had
a ' pocket-pistol,' or wanted to step round to a
saloon because he was dead beat out by being on
his feet all day, or by whatever else he had had
to do. Family men went home; the boys — by
which I mean all the younger hands — went round
to their clubs, or to the reading-room, or to the
gymnasium, after Sheridan started it, or to play
ball, or croquet, or tennis. The open air is always
a good stimulus. What did that old Quaker say
to you, Spinner? "

" He said, ' Tell them to plant trees. Interest
them in planting trees. They will become so
excited and fascinated as they watch the trees
that they will have no disposition to drink.' Dear
old soul ! He judged everybody by himself."

"Yes," said Workman, " but there was an ele
ment of truth in the remark, as old Dr. Converse
used to say. Keep a young fellow in high exer
cise, in good health, and in open air, and the
temptation of liquor is reduced to a minimum.
After three or four generations of such life there
will be little or none.

" We encourage, in every way, — I think Miss
Jane Stevens and Mr. Ledger have shown you
that, — all associations of the young people which

Temperance 403

will give the stimulus of society in place of the
stimulus of liquor. The mistake about such things
is, that your Useful Knowledge kind of people
think that everybody wants to be learning some
thing all the time. That is all nonsense. The
appetite for learning can be satisfied, just as the
appetite for roast beef can be satisfied, — and
when it is satisfied, it is nonsense to try to revive
it till the time comes. Here is where Dick Sheri
dan helps us, — more, perhaps, than he thought
when he began. He was not satisfied that the
boys should play cricket and base-ball, without
giving their mothers and sisters and sweethearts
comfortable shady seats where they could sit and
see them. He encouraged with all his might the
Knights Templars, so that they established that
restaurant where I met you yesterday."

" The Take it Easy!' I said ; " I was delighted
with the name."

They both laughed. "That is one of Dick's
notions. He had it on the brain. He said that
the hands must learn not to hurry when they ate,
or as they amused themselves. Well, the Take it
Easy is a Co-operation enterprise. I really believe
they pay a dividend at the end of the year to every
body who drinks a glass of soda or eats a bowl of
oysters. Sheridan joined in with the Knights with
all his zeal to have it carried through, and it is
really now a great comfort and convenience to
us all.

" You see it was the old stage-house of the place,

404 How They Lived in Hampton

even before there were any mills here, — a great
square brick tavern, probably a great deal too
large at its best. We have almost no travellers
or visitors. In the old regime here, they made it
pay, somehow, by keeping the bar pretty active.
We had abolished all that.

"Accordingly, very soon after we were in full
blast, the owners came to me to know what we
would do with it. I did not choose to be embar
rassed by them or their notions, and Spinner agreed
with me. We took it off their hands at a very low
price, and it is now a part of the property of this
company. Then we took the same ground which
we took about the store and about the tenements.
We meant to make our money by manufacturing
goods. Our other property must pay us the
' idiot's dividend ' and the taxes. So the Knights
Templars undertook to swing this thing. They
have their own club-rooms there, — they have a
chess-room, where they play more checkers and
backgammon than chess, I think, — they have a
billiard-room, — they have their own reading-room.
But gradually the restaurant grew, and it now takes,
as you saw, the whole ground-floor. The men sit
there and talk politics and discuss boat-races and
ball games. It is a place of resort. You can order
something to drink, just as in old times. But it is
one of Eaton's fifty-seven temperance drinks, and
nobody has a headache the next morning.

" Eaton sent them up the man they have there,
and he and his wife have a genius for making the

Temperance 405

place attractive. In the first place their things are
good. Their coffee is matchless, and their bouillon.
Well, the place is pretty, — there are always fresh
flowers, and in summer it is cool, and in winter it
is warm. There is a room where the women can
look in, and be by themselves, and have a cup of
tea if they choose. They are not locked out, and
come and go as the rest of us do. That gives it
all a home look. It breaks up all temptation to
have little separate ' treats ' in little dirty club-
rooms, that Goodyear here will give any party a
much better entertainment than anybody else can,
and it costs them less.

"Now, observe, all this goes forward as a thing
of course. But it is not a thing of course. You
do not usually find what is called a temperance
hotel to approach the Take it Easy in elegance or
neatness or attractiveness. But nothing is said
about liquor, more than anything would be said
about opium at Delmonico's. They would not
assure their guests there that no opium was served,
— and Goodyear does not assure his guests that
no liquor is served. ' They take it for granted/ he
says, — ' they take it for granted that I know how
to keep a place of resort for gentlemen.' "

So much for what Workman meant by overcom
ing evil by good. But all of them said, very seri
ously, that an active temperance " propaganda "
was necessary, all the same. Holmes said to me
that he knew what temptations his boys and girls
were to meet, and he wanted them to be fore-

406 How They Lived in Hampton

warned. They had the best temperance speak
ers, and had them often. The Women's Christian
Temperance Union had a branch there, the Tem
plars, and some of the other societies. The boys
and girls grew up with the feeling that when they
left Hampton to live in larger places, where there
was much temptation, and where they saw the open
sale of liquor at the bar, that they were, in some
sort, the apostles of a new order. They had some
thing of the pride which the graduate of a well-
equipped college has, when he descends among
what he thinks, for the time, inferior people.

They wanted, if they could, to do their part in
extending a system which they had learned to love.
If they had not had this positive wish to be of use
in the temperance cause, all the negative effect of
the plans which had been made for them would
have been useless. But, as they did wish to help
their comrades, they themselves were the more

1 It may be as well to say, in a footnote, that "Eaton" is
Mr. Charles Sumner Eaton, of the Temperance Spa, Washington
St., Boston.

CHAPTER XIII

THE SAVINGS-BANK

T TNDER the old order of things at Hampton,
^ before Thankful Nourse and Spinner bought
the property, there had been an old-fashioned
Savings-Bank. Such institutions have been very
generally established in the New England factory-
towns, to the very great advantage of all concerned.
The administration of them has generally been
careful and honorable. The supervision by the
authorities of the States is severe and close, and
there have not been many instances in which the
depositors have lost anything by the infidelity of
the custodians or by their carelessness. On the
other hand, the custom of depositing money even
in very small sums in these banks has become
general, it would be almost fair to say universal.
In the State of Massachusetts, with a population of
1,976,264, there were last year 906,039 different
accounts in these institutions. This shows that
almost every working man and working woman
must have had an account in one of them or
another. The average sum to the credit of each
depositor was $321.00, the largest deposit per-

408 How They Lived in Hampton

mitted by the law being $5000.00. The total
amount was $2^i,igy)goo.^6.1 Persons who have
more money to deposit are expected to place it in
other investments.

The success of the savings-bank system in Amer
ica is largely due to the spirit in which it was con
ceived. The history of these banks shows that
they were not founded on the miserable ideas of
some bold speculator, who foresaw the immense
sums which would be at the direction of their
managers, and was eager to control the investment
of these funds. They were, on the other hand,
set on foot by high-minded Christian people, who
were eager in their wish to improve the condition
of poor people, to give to them the same rights in
the use of their little earnings which the rich had
in the use of theirs, and to encourage, in whatever
way might be possible, habits of prudence among
the work-people around them. It is the proud
boast of one of the associations of clergymen in
Massachusetts that the savings-bank of the county,
one of the oldest in the State, was created by the
inspiration given at a " Ministers' Meeting," as
the phrase of New England calls the meeting of
the association.2 The plan was proposed by Mrs.
Joseph Allen, herself in attendance. She had read
of the success of a similar plan set on foot among
the philanthropic people of England.

In this spirit, to borrow Mr. Sherlock's text
again, those who had succeeded in business life are

1 The figures are for 1886. 2 The Worcester Association.

The Savings-Bank 409

willing to bear the burdens of those who are yet
to begin it. And to their willingness is due the
willingness of men of great business ability to give
their time and care to the administration of these
trusts, without compensation. It is considered
almost a point of honor among mercantile men, or
bankers of ability and position, to do their part in
the proper supervision of the savings-banks of their
towns. It will sometimes happen, undoubtedly,
that a needy adventurer thinks it would be a good
plan to establish a new savings-bank, of which he
may be the active manager, with a good salary
and the advantages which fall to a man who directs
large investments. But if the bank is to succeed,
it must be able to show the names of a board of
directors respected in the community for business
sagacity and honor. The adventurer who pro
poses it may sing never so sweetly, and adver
tise never so widely. His bank will not attract
many depositors until they know who is to have
the oversight of their money.

The direction of savings-banks, then, so that the
depositors may be sure of a fair income, and that
their funds are not wasted, becomes one of the
unpaid public duties of Christian men, who know
that all their time and talents are given to them as
a trust, and who mean to use their trust for the
benefit of their fellows.

The little bank at Hampton under the old ad
ministration of the mills there, had been well ad
ministered, and had kept its fair share of deposits

410 How They Lived in Hampton

from the savings of the work-people. But when
hard times came, as the pay-days were more un
certain, and when at last the old company failed,
the people had moved away, one after another,
and had, of course, withdrawn their deposits, —
perhaps, alas ! to pay the charges of moving ; or,
at best to deposit them in banks nearer to their
new homes. As the managers of the mills left,
they had withdrawn, so soon as they could, from
their places on the board of administration, and
the Savings-Bank was little more than a name and
a sign on the wall of the bank building, when the
renewal of Hampton began.

Mr. Spinner told me that, as soon as he got the
machinery into working order, he called Mr.
Nourse's attention to the necessity of awakening
new confidence in the bank, and found, to his
satisfaction, that he saw the necessity plainly.
Whatever else he thought visionary or fanciful in
the notions and wishes of these working people, he
did not think any plans for saving money fanci
ful. He knew too well that he should never have
been a capitalist had he not, as he said, " salted
down " ten per cent of his income, since he had
sold a string of trout at a hotel for a quarter of a
dollar. On Mr. Spinner's appeal, therefore, he
agreed to be one of the trustees of the bank, know
ing that he could attend to that duty without
personal attendance at all the meetings of the
managers. And he interested himself personally
in inducing gentlemen of position, character, and

The Savings-Bank 4 1 1

means in the neighborhood to take necessary
trust and care of its management. When they
took the bank in hand, the deposits were at the
very lowest ebb. But, with the improvement in
the prosperity of Hampton, the working men and
women, and even the children, began to open their
accounts. The bank received as small sums as
five cents at a time, and began to allow interest on
the first of every month after the deposit was
made. It does not take long to teach young
people what is the value of an arrangement by
which their little wealth grows while they are
asleep, or seems to do so. And with the steadi
ness of management, and the evident care taken
of their property by men who were among the most
distinguished in the neighborhood, almost all the
people of Hampton were disposed to place their
earnings, as far as they could save them, for a
few months in the keeping of the savings-bank.

Spinner said that, so far, their experience was
only the same as that of hundreds of other insti
tutions of the same kind in different parts of the
Northern States, and he said that he did not know
but that their bank would have remained exactly
like all other American savings-banks, but from the
accident that they had a German named SchefTer
at the head of the dyeing-room. Scheffer came to
Spinner one day in a good deal of indignation, and
it was some time before Spinner found out what
the matter was. The German had been a depos
itor in the bank from the very beginning, and this,

412 How They Lived in Hampton

Spinner, who was one of the directors, knew per
fectly well. His wife was another, a nephew he
had was another, a grown-up son had a small
deposit, and one or two of the children had bank
books also, with their little savings entered upon
them. Spinner had always supposed that Scheffer
was one of the people best satisfied with the
arrangements of the bank, as he had often heard
him speak in a cordial way of the simplicity and
dignity with which its business was conducted.
He was all the more surprised on this particular
occasion, which proved to be a critical occasion, to
find that Scheffer was in a rage with the whole
management of the institution, had given notice
that he should withdraw his funds on the first
possible day when he had the right to do so, and
that every one in his room would do the same.
Spinner soothed him as well as he could, made
him tell the whole story from the beginning to the
end, and then was amazed to find that the Ger
man was disappointed and disgusted because the
treasurer of the bank had refused to discount a
little note for him.

Spinner at once entered on an explanation, in as
moderate and gentle language as he could, to show
his German friend that such a thing was utterly un
heard of in the savings-banks of New England as a
small discount on a small note, given on personal
security. He tried to make Scheffer understand
that the general policy, from the beginning of
these institutions, had been to avoid any resem-

The Savings-Bank 413

blance to the working of the ordinary banks of
discount, and that they had been administered also
as trust funds, in which, naturally enough, the
larger the investment the better for the persons
concerned, because there is the less expense of
handling and oversight. He cited to him that re
mark of Josiah Quincy's, which has been already
quoted in another part of this essay. He said,
with some humor, that the palaces of Boston were
built with the money of the servant-girls of Boston.
It is perfectly true that those servant-girls have
given to the great savings-banks the money which
those banks lend out, on the perfect security of
mortgages, on the palaces of which Mr. Quincy
was speaking. Spinner tried to explain to his
angry friend that if he wanted a little money, he
himself would gladly be his security on a note
which he could carry to the nearest bank of dis
count, which was at Wentworth, the large town of
the neighborhood. He told him that he would find
that he was perfectly well known to the directors
there, and that they would be very glad to accom
modate him, if he would take such a note as he
proposed. Spinner said to him : " I had occasion
to borrow a little money a fortnight ago, and I
went over there, with a note indorsed by Freeman,
and they lent me the money gladly. That is what
they are for, and that is the place for you to go to."
Scheffer was toned down a little when he found
that his character had not been intentionally
assailed by the treasurer of the bank, and was

414 How They Lived in Hampton

soothed as Spinner persuaded him that his repu
tation had extended as far as Wentworth and
farther. But when the first tempest of his rage
was over, he continued to talk on the subject, and
to show what he thought the narrowness of the
restriction by which the treasurer had been bound.
He then told Spinner, what Spinner told me he
did not know before, that in his own country the
bank of savings where he made his deposits would
have been at the same time a bank of discount,
not in general business, but restricted to a business
with those very persons who made the deposits.
He explained to him the system, simple enough in
operation, though a little complicated in descrip
tion, by which the bank secures itself absolutely
for the small loans which it made to its depositors.
It might happen that a man wanted, for temporary
purposes, such as the furnishing of his house, or
the education of one of his children, a sum of
money larger than he had himself on deposit in
the bank. He would want to borrow this money,
and he would have friends enough among the
other depositors who were confident in his integ
rity, or confident in the purpose for which he
needed the funds, to assist him with their credit,
as far as it would go. What is the measure of
such people's credit? Clearly enough it is, so far
as the bank is concerned, estimated with perfect
accuracy by the deposits which they have in that
institution. If, then, Scheffer wanted to borrow
five hundred dollars, as in this case he did want to

The Savings-Bank 415

borrow that amount, if he had on deposit only
three hundred dollars, the bank would, with perfect
willingness, lend him the whole sum, if he would
bring them a note signed by himself and by two of
his companions, each of whom had deposits of the
same amount with his own, it being understood
upon the face of the note that they were not to
draw upon their deposit until the note was paid,
and that the note constituted a lien, of which
the bank could avail itself as security for these
indorsements. Of course no security could be
more absolute. The bank itself holds the very
property from which the debt could be paid, if it
should prove that the indorsers must be called
upon. Scheffer explained to Spinner, what Spin
ner did not know, that there were thousands of
such banks in Germany, carrying on the double
business of receiving small deposits and making
small loans to the depositors.

It is perfectly true to say, in theory, that
the ordinary New England system comes out
at the same thing. In the ordinary New Eng
land system, the depositor places his money in
the savings-bank, the savings-bank loans the
money in considerable sums to capitalists and
others who handle considerable sums, and the
bank and the depositor then receive the advan
tage of the interest paid upon such loans. If it
happens that the depositor wants bank accommo
dation, he goes to an entirely different institution, —
as in this case Scheffer would have to go to the

41 6 How They Lived in Hampton

bank of discount at Wentworth, — and he avails
himself there of such credit as he has, founded
upon his property or upon his reputation, and
borrows the money he needs. Or, without bor
rowing money, he withdraws the whole of his de
posit, uses that in his speculation, whatever it is,
and when the speculation is ended, makes his de
posit anew. But it is easy to see that all this
means in practice is, that it shall be difficult, not
to say impossible, for dealers in money on a small
scale to obtain money at banks of discount. The
banks of discount do not want such customers;
human nature is weak, and the average cashier of
a bank prefers to deal with large customers rather
than with small customers, and to have its business
conducted in large sums rather than in small sums.
In practice, therefore, a man who wants to borrow
small sums of money is obliged to borrow in the
expensive and cumbrous system which sends him
to a pawnbroker, and his range of credit is only
as large as that very limited range which can be
represented by the articles which he can put in
deposit as security for his loan.

The German system, on the other hand, gives to
the man exactly the credit that he is entitled to.
It enables his friends, though they be in the hum
blest walks of life, and be persons of very little
means, to come to his assistance, for whatever pur
pose he needs money, just as far as their means
will go and they are disposed. In this particular
case of Scheffer's, where his anger had been so in-

The Savings-Bank 417

tensely excited by the refusal of the treasurer, he
had offered to the treasurer absolute security for
every cent he wanted to borrow, and had offered
it to him in the very simple form of proposing to
place with him the bank-books of his friends,
amounting to a sum much larger than that he pro
posed to borrow. The treasurer had refused, be
cause he was not in the habit of doing such things.
This reason, usually alleged by persons in such
positions, had not satisfied Scheffer, and hence his
towering rage.

It was in every way desirable to conciliate Schef
fer in this particular instance. The directors of
the bank did not want to have one important sub-
department of the bank alienated, nor did they
want to have the German part of their constituency
disaffected to their management. Mr. Spinner,
therefore, brought the matter up at the next
directors' meeting. And, in the first place, it was
voted that the security offered by Mr. Scheffer for
the loan he wanted was entirely satisfactory, and
that the treasurer be directed to lend to him the
amount he asked for, as soon as he had that
amount for use. But, what was much more impor
tant, a committee was appointed, which should
draw up a practicable plan, in which any one of
the depositors might borrow money in small sums
if he needed, even though the sum -asked for was
larger than he had on deposit himself, if he offered
the names, as his indorsers, of men who had them
selves deposits equal to the amount borrowed ;

27

4i 8 How They Lived in Hampton

these depositors giving the amount they had in the
bank as their security for the fulfilment of their
obligation. All this, of course, made it necessary
to open some new books, and, indeed, developed a
side of the bank which was not contemplated in
the system to which it belonged. But it did not
prove that it required any new legislation, for these
banks always had the power to lend money on
personal security, if this security were satisfactory
to the directors, and were such that they could
readily call in the amount which they had lent,
when the exigencies of the bank required. Clearly
enough, no security could be better than that which
these directors had, for the funds of the indorsers
and the principal were in their own keeping, and
they were responsible for them.

The old-fashioned theory, in favor of which
much may be said, is, that it is not well to facilitate
the borrowing of money when the borrower is
poor. The proverb, which, though somewhat ir
reverent, is quite true, might have a wider applica
tion to advantage. It says that " Debt is the
devil." In the sense intended, it is very desirable
that everybody, the rich and the poor, should take
to heart the lesson which is involved in this epi
grammatic expression. At the same time, as
every man of affairs knows, it is necessary some
times that a man who has no ready money, but
has other property, should be able to borrow
ready money on the security of that property. It
is impossible to give any fair reason why this privi-

The Savings-Bank 419

lege should not be open to poor men as it is open
to rich men, in proportion to the property which
they have to offer for their security. The poor
man is as eager to take care of his little as the rich
man is to take care of his great. Probably it will
prove that the poor man is more watchful over the
sum which he has to put at risk than is the man
who is used to larger advantages. In such a case
as we had under our eyes at Hampton, there was
really no danger that the friends and neighbors of
Schefifer should be less anxious for the security of
their little property than he was for the security
of his. They did not give their indorsements with
out such consideration as they thought sufficient.
It was nobody's business what those considerations
were, — whether they were considerations of friend
ship, gratitude, or some greedy hope that in the
future he would do the like by them. It was no
body's business to inquire as to their motives, or
as to what the result would be to them. So far as
the bank officers had anything to do with the mat
ter, they had to preserve the property which was
intrusted to them, and to invest it safely. This
they were able to do, at some expense of worry
and time in the account-keeping, by as simple an
arrangement as that which was adopted.

And it had not proved that the people were
misled into any extravagant speculations by such
a convenient arrangement for borrowing small
sums of money. Up to a certain point, a man of
good reputation and established position could in-

420 How They Lived in Hampton

duce fellow-dopositors to indorse his note so that
he could borrow money. But he could not do
this unless he showed them why he wanted the
money, and unless they had reason to believe he
would be able to meet his note and theirs when it
became due. The friends whom I talked with had
satisfied themselves that the system worked well,
and expressed their surprise that it had not been
more generally introduced as a part of the practice
of the smaller savings-banks of the country.

In one of our talks about the bank and its results
I asked some general questions about their chari
ties.

Mr. Spinner said in reply that if I lived with
them a little longer I should see that they were
just like other people, and that they did not need
any other organization of charity or institutions
for taking care of the sick or aged than other
people did. " Because a man works in a mill, he
is not a different sort of man. Half the absurdities
which get into print about what they call the ' labor
problem/ and, worse than that, sometimes come
into disastrous action, spring from this notion, that
the world is divided into men and women and
' operatives.' ' Operatives ' is a Latin word which
has been chosen to represent this outside being,
who is not exactly human. Now, if he had three
legs, or two mouths, or walked on his head, it
might be all right to classify him so, and to pro
vide for him separately. But, — as he is just like
other men, — as he is like farmers and sailors and

The Savings-Bank 421

lawyers, it seems more possible to treat him as
other men are treated, and not to undertake to
separate him off into a class, as people call it, with
its peculiar institutions, whether of charity or gov
ernment or other arrangement of civil order."

I had learned by this time that this was a matter
about which Spinner felt rather extravagantly, and
which he discussed rather warmly. I had no wish
to provoke an angry discussion, but I said that I
did not mean to offend him. " But certainly there
are differences," I said, " between the hands in the
Hampton mills and as many farmers in the valley
above and the valley below. The great difference
is that they have to work when the mill works.
Their hours of work have to fit in with the hours
when the machinery is going. Now the farmer
works fifteen hours a day, or five hours a day, or
none. In this distinction there is a difference, and
it is as well to acknowledge it."

By this time Spinner had cooled down, and he
said he hoped he had not spoken too warmly.
" But the truth is," said he, " that you have stated
precisely the distinction, such as it is, between us
here and other work-people. These young men
whom you see in my room are not chained to this
machinery. That one whom I call Bob came to
me this morning to say that he had engaged for
the next summer with the people at Mount Pleasant.
He is to be at the head of their livery stable there.
The man who brought me the patterns just now
has been out in Dakota with his brother, who has

422 How They Lived in Hampton

a farm there. He will go again, one of these days,
— is, indeed, of rather a restless turn, — but I sup
pose that is good for him. And the girls and
women come and go in the same fashion.

"Now, to answer your question, as perhaps I
should have done before, such people, living in the
same life as the rest of the world, need no special
system for their old age, or their sickness, or ' other
infirmity.' What is good for farmers or lawyers
or editors or doctors is good for them. But they
need nothing more, and they take nothing up.
When you come to speak of Lowell, or Phila
delphia, or Chicago, you speak of something dif
ferent from Hampton. But you need higher
organization of your charities there, not because
you are dealing with workmen, but because you
are dealing with large cities. As to large cities —
well, I am very much of Jefferson's notion."

" What was that?" I asked.

"Oh, he said large cities are large sores. I
think Sallust thought so. To go back. It is true,
and I am rather proud to say it, that the English
workingmen, and not the French theorists, devel
oped and worked out all the detail of the magnifi
cent Friendly Societies, which, under one name or
another, cover the whole land, and make what is
technically called ' charity ' the less necessary.
Providence, prudence, is a great deal better than
charity. And if a ' Forester/ or a * Druid/ or an
' Odd Fellow ' has had at once the Christian kind
ness and the Saxon good sense to pay regularly

The Savings-Bank 423

his monthly dues to the lodge, or camp, or chapter
of the order to which he belongs, why, he has saved
society no end of trouble in bothering about his
widow and his orphans. I am not a Freemason.
But I am disposed to think that their arrangements
for mutual help, or what is really a sickness and
death insurance, have been very much enlarged in
the last half-century. However that is, I am sure
that these other orders, Rechabites, Knights of
Honor, Odd Fellows, Druids, Foresters, Sons of
Temperance, and the rest, give to everybody
opportunities for providing for an evil day, so
general and so careful that we have no need of
establishing separate plans of our own, in as small
a place as Hampton.

" It all comes to mutual insurance. In fact, as
you know, some of the associations simply take
the name of Mutual Insurance Companies. Some
of them, indeed, do not collect their dues until the
exact occasion comes when the money is needed.
In a small club of a thousand members you will
receive a note which says that our brother, Mr.
Jones, fell from a roof yesterday, or died with
typhoid, or was drowned at sea last week, and that
the Secretary knows you will be glad to pay two
dollars, as you are bound to do, by the way, for
the fund now due to his widow. Well, there is a
certain advantage in that plan. You see, and can
not help seeing, how good a thing you are engaged
in. You are sorry for the widow; you are glad
you did not fall from the roof yourself. And you

424 How They Lived in Hampton

pay your two dollars with a sort of personal interest
that a man does not always feel in paying a money
assessment. But, of course, the principle is the
same. You are trained to laying up something for
an evil day ; and — here is the important thing —
you are trained to remember that no misfortune
comes to you that is not ' common to man,' as the
Bible says. You are trained to do your part, as a
Christian man, for all the others.

" For, no matter what name the thing takes, all
this mutual provision and care is a part of the
Christian religion. It is all part of 'The Way.'
It was set on foot by Jesus Christ, as distinctly as
if he had dictated the constitution of a company
to Saint Peter. If we were each and all so many
separate, selfish bodies, we should not do such
things. It is because we are children of God,
whom Christ died to save, that we do such things,
and encourage other people to do them. Whether
a lodge meeting opens with prayer or not, all the
same it was founded the day Jesus Christ was
born, and it never would exist were it not for his
Gospel."

CHAPTER XIV

WORK AND LABOR

I WAS to make a little speech at a picnic of a
few of the hands one afternoon, and I asked
Mr. Spinner's advice as to what I should say.

" Pray speak to them as you would speak to any
body else," he said, reverting to his old sensitive
feeling of dislike for anything which, in our hard
working country, made workmen into a " class."
" But if you must make distinctions, do not call
us ' laborers/ and do not talk of the ' dignity of
labor.' "

" Why not? " said I, dully enough. " Is not all
that you do intended to give dignity to labor, and
are you not all laborers? "

" No," said Spinner, with an intentional expres
sion of indignation. " I am afraid that there are
one or two laboring men about, digging post-holes,
or at work in the bottom of the flume, but they are
all trying to rise from the grade of laborers to
the grade of workmen. Labor is always wearing,
fatiguing, repulsive, and every man who is a man
is always trying to replace it by some less wearing,
less repulsive, and less fatiguing process. That is

426 How They Lived in Hampton

to say, the whole of what you call civilization con
sists in substituting Work, which is the conquest
of matter by spirit, for Labor, in which a man
throws his own dead weight or muscle against the
dead weight of the clod he is handling."

Here was a bit of philology which interested me,
and I made Spinner follow it out. He said that it
had been an immense satisfaction to him when the
late Dr. Bethune of Brooklyn called his attention
to the radical distinction between the two words.
He told me that I should find the distinction care
fully carried out in the English Bible. He said
that God is always spoken of as working, never as
laboring. He said that when the righteous die,
they cease from their labors^ but their works follow
them, — for that angels and archangels are fellow-
workers with God himself. Labors, he said, are
spoken of in the correct English of the Bible as we
speak of toils, or drudgery, with persecutions and
shipwrecks, and other finite necessities of a finite
world. But Paul and the other saints are always
hoping to be released from their labors, while they,
also, like angels and archangels, are glad to be
fellow-workmen with God. He even said that the
one place where Paul called himself a fellow-
laborer with God, in our Bible, was a slip of the
translators, and that it had been corrected in the
Revised Version.

I asked him if Dr. Bethune had ever printed his
study of this subject. He said he had never seen
his address in print. But he gave me an address

Work and Labor 427

of his own, which I am glad to copy here. For
Spinner's mock rage was really sublime, when he
ridiculed the stump orators who came up to politi
cal meetings in October about the " dignity of
labor." " Probably not one of them ever did an
honest day's work in his life," Spinner said grimly.
" If he had, he would talk about the dignity of
work, and leave labor where it belongs." I chaffed
Spinner a little, for I told him he was himself mak
ing the classification against which he warned me,
— only he was making a class of laborers.

" I make a class of laborers ! " he cried ;
" Heaven forbid ! No, I am doing all I can to re
duce the amount of necessary labor, and to sub
stitute work for it, — as when the steam derrick
lifts those stones, which ten years ago would have
been lifted by the labor of men." And on this I
went off to prepare myself for the picnic by read
ing the lecture.

It had been prepared for one of their own ly-
ceum courses. But I saw by the notes on the
cover that he had delivered it in a good many of
the neighboring towns ; and when I read it, I was
glad that it had been favorably received. For, as
the reader will see, the doctrine of the lecture went
a good deal beyond a mere speculation on the use
of English words, and involved a good many ot
the principles on which the social order of our
modern life depends.

After an introduction half in joke, in which he
described, with a good deal of humor, the political

428 How They Lived in Hampton

shyster, who appears once a year, posing as the
" friend of labor," Spinner went into the etymology
of the words " labor " and " work." He cited from
Shakespeare and Milton expressions which showed
their use of them.

That is, he contrasted

" Painful labors both by sea and land "
against

" Come, let us to our holy work again.'*

And he took from Milton,

" Body shall up to spirit work,"
and,

" Our better part remains to work in close design,"

which he contrasted against the phrase,

" Those afflictions you now labor under."

" But this classical use of language, if I may so
call it, is not yet old-fashioned. Go out on the
platform of a railroad station, — go forward and
speak to the engineer. ' We are not on time, Mr.
Stevenson. What's the matter?' 'I don't just
know, sir, but she labors badly on the up-grade.'
But suppose it is the other way, and you say to
your Mr. Stevenson, ' You 're running on time to
night.' ' Ah, yes,' he says, with a broad grin ; ' she
works well.' That man knows the difference be
tween ' labor,' which always wears out, — that is
what the word means in Latin, — and ' work,' which
never hurt anybody or anything when it was used

Work and Labor 429

in the proper way and the proper proportion.
They would tell you the same thing when the Puri
tan ran her race against the Galatea. If the sailing-
master were satisfied, he would nod his head, and
he would say, ' Does she not work well?' And if
he were dissatisfied, — why, if the man did not
swear, it would be well, but he would be sure
to say that she ' labored ' with every wave of the
sea.

"The Digger Indian, so long as he digs with
his hands, is a fit type of the laborer. Robinson
Crusoe, — when he was flung upon the beach,
without any tools, to work with his bare hands
and feet, — he was a laborer. He had to bend
down the trees to make his wigwam. If he was
heavy enough, — if they broke where he wanted,
or bent as he chose, — happy for him, — he was
a successful laborer. But it was his dead weight,
and the dead pull of his muscles, by which he
succeeded. Robinson Crusoe, when he put a
lever under a stone, so that with half the labor
he could do the same work, became a workman.
Why, as lately as when the dam was built here,
which holds back the water for our mills, the
drilling of the holes * in the granite for the split
ting of the stone was all so much dead labor.
Ten or twelve good fellows — how I pity them,
and so do you — stood on the edge of the quarry
there, with ten or twelve heavy drills, and all
day long had to thump, thump, thump, as they
made the long holes into the hard stone for the

430 How They Lived in Hampton

blast of the evening. Did my friend, the Hon
orable Slippery Gabbletongue, go up and tell
them that labor was honorable? Did he tell them
so in a practical way, by taking any man's drill
from him, and sending him off to the next pri
mary meeting while he drilled? Not he. Mr.
Gabbletongue was in the drummer's room, up at
the hotel, preparing his notes on the ' toil-worn
craftsman.' The ten or twelve good fellows
thumped away there, till one fine day a real re
former, a man who knew the difference between
labor and work, looked in upon them. And he
set up — you have seen it — a little portable
boiler and engine there. As long as he wanted,
it drove, not ten drills, but thirty. And one or
two good fellows tended the drills, in careful and
delicate work, while the little spitting engine did
all the labor. And your friend, Mr. Willing,
tended the gauges and the escape-valve, and lay
in the shade and read Henry George, or wrote
a love-letter. He and his two workmen did
three times what was done before. And this
was because they substituted a little intelligent
work for a great deal of unintelligent labor.

" Simply, my friends, the advance which the
world has made in its commerce, its manufac
ture, and all its social order, since the year 1775,
— when Watt and Bolton spoke the word and
freed the people, — has been in this line of the
diminution of labor, while true work is substi
tuted in its place. I rode into the woods, fifty

Work and Labor 431

miles up the river, last fall. What did I find
there? I found a settler clearing out his farm,
in a new precinct. Was he swinging the axe,
as the ' grand old man ' does when he wants to
take exercise? He was reading a newspaper.
He had one of Whittier and Woodruff's little
horse-powers by the road, — he had his old gray
nag at work in it; his boy Tom was training a
circular saw upon the log in question ; and in a
tenth part of the time which the laboring man
would have needed with his axe, the old gray
had done the business. Labor was relegated to
the brutes, — where in the end it belongs, — and
intelligent work was there in its place.

"But it is not brutes alone, or chiefly, who
are thus drawn into the service of man to take
his labors for him. There are these giants whom
man has created, — whom he commands, — as
Aladdin commanded his slaves. It is a slavery,
thank God, without a lash or a scar. Watt and
Bolton first, and since them more inventors than
can be named, coming down to our own Corliss
and so many of our American inventors, have been
calling into being these giants, whose bones are of
wood and iron and brass and steel, and bidding
them do our bidding. And here at the Falls,
you have, in the same way, with our turbines and
our flume, compelled the tireless waterfall to
take our labor, while we work. The workmen I
am speaking to know what progress has been made
in the last generation in this direction. But all

432 How They Lived in Hampton

of you may not know that in the manufacture
of cotton cloth, for instance, thirty hands will
now do the work which required a hundred hands
only thirty years ago. I say, do the work. In
my strict sense of the word, not one of those
hands is a laborer. He is a skilled workman ; and
just as the cutler of to-day does not drive his own
stone, the spinner of to-day does not twist his own
thread, nor the weaver drive his own shuttle. The
labor is done for him by the waterfall or by the
piston.

"And what has become of the seventy men
and women set free from the work of spinning
the thread or weaving the web? Here is the
most interesting result of all. What is the new
variety of industry, — what is the wide range of
art and manufacture, — but the immediate product
of the hands and the heads of these men and
women who have new fields of adventure to try,
who profit by the new inventions, and find new
work, of grades more and more interesting, open
before them? You have the marvels of electricity.
You have callings created by them. You have all
the wonderful fertility of fine art. Your homes
are bright with pictures and books, cheaper than
ever and better than ever. Travelling becomes a
luxury ; and it is the luxury of the poor, where it
was the necessity of the rich. Gradually but cer
tainly the day's work shortens; yet the world's
product enlarges. Prices steadily fall. Comfort
steadily increases. And all this is exactly in pro-

Work and Labor 433

portion as, by an intelligent invention, we sub
stitute work for labor."

At this point a double black line was drawn
across Spinner's manuscript, and the next page
was left blank. It was clear enough that a pause
was made here in delivery, — perhaps what the old
lecturers called an " intermission." The address
then went on in a somewhat different vein.

" I hope no man or woman hears me who
thinks the distinction I have drawn is a mere
matter of the dictionary-makers or word-splitters.
I hate them and their deeds. I dare not try
to say how much evil they have done to this
world, and especially to industry — honest indus
try — and to work — honest work. The curse —
may I say it? — of the Son of God is upon so
many of them, where, in that terrible description
of his, in the shortest words of our language, he
speaks of those who ' say and do not.' I would be
dumb rather than come here to entertain you with
a mere discussion of words.

" No ; I have dwelt on the difference between
the two words because I want to show the dif
ference between two things. There are countries
and there are times in which there is a great deal
of labor and very little work. There are barbar
ous countries and barbarous times. There are
other countries and other times where there is a
great deal of work and very little labor. Such,
thank God, is our country and this time ; and we
call it a civilized country and a civilized age simply

28

434 How They Lived in Hampton

because there is much work and little labor. But,
my friends, we do not know — we do not begin to
know — what we mean by that great word ' civil
ization.' If our children know, — and I hope they
will, — it will be because we are faithful to our part
in substituting work for labor. We must do our
part to have the drudgery done by beasts, by water,
by steam, by electricity, and by any new power
which the genius of man, guided by the Spirit of
God, can tame. To make more places for work
men, and to lift more laboring men into these
places, — this is our duty.

" We respect labor. Yes ; we respect anything
that is honest. But all the encouragement we give
to labor shall be the encouragement a man gives
to a tired boy on his long walk. The walk shall
soon be over, and the rest from it shall be
won.

" It is our business, first of all, to encourage
the laboring man, by opening to him every pos
sible line of promotion, that he may become a
workman. Help him to go to the evening school.
Help him with his books. Encourage his children
in the same way. Do not ask him nor expect
him to remain a drudge or a laborer long; but
show him that, in a country like ours, the lines of
promotion are always open. These few years of
labor are like the voyage of the sea-sick pas
senger, every day of which brings him nearer to
the promised land.

"If you will tell him the truth, you can make

Work and Labor 435

him see this. We have very accurate knowledge
of the proportion of laborers to workmen in North
ern America. The statistics of Massachusetts are
precise. They show us that of the working force
of that industrious commonwealth only nine per
cent are ' unskilled laborers.' The other ninety-
one per cent are workmen. They are conquering
matter, not by the matter in their bones and blood,
but by the immortal Spirit which comes from God.
Only one eleventh of the force of Massachusetts
are laboring men and women. Now, suppose Mas
sachusetts was an old-fashioned Japan. Suppose
there was a wall of fire around her, and no one
could come in. Suppose she said she would com
pel her young men, as they started in life, to do
this heavy work, — to be her drudges and labor
ers ; and that, when each had done it, she would
promote them to be workmen, — fellow-workers
with God Almighty ! They would only have to
toil in that drudgery four little years or less. They
would be for that time like the conscripts in a
German army. In their young life they would so
serve the commonwealth that as men and women
they could rise to higher service as workmen and
workwomen, — yes, as the directors of the drudges.
Any man would say that he would buy that eman
cipation by those four years of drudgery, if that
was the only opening to it.

" Now these figures for Massachusetts are un
doubtedly the figures for all the industrial States
of America. You have, then, a right to say to

436 How They Lived in Hampton

that good fellow from Italy or from Hungary who
digs a ditch for you to-day, * Look aloft, my
friend ; look forward cheerfully. At the most we
only need you a few years in this toil. And our
schools are open, our library is open, our shops are
open, that you may leave this toil and rise higher.'
If the man turns you off, — if he had rather
drink bad beer and bad whiskey all his life, and
all his life be a beast, a drudge, and a toilsman, —
that is his affair. But be sure you do your part
to lift him higher. Make him temperate. Teach
him to read. Teach him to write. Give him a
chance to draw. Give him a chance to use his
hands. Perhaps he can carve; perhaps he can
paint. Show him that he has a mind. Show
him this by showing him that he has a soul. Let
his soul begin to use his mind and his body, and
you have made him free indeed.

" I spoke bitterly of those people who make me
sick. They are the people who talk all day, when
they know nothing, and have nothing to tell me.
They are like the Philadelphia printing-presses in
the Revolution, that clattered all day and all night,
and printed nothing but sheets of Continental
money, of which every word was a visible lie.
When a man like that looks into my weaving-room,
and sees an intelligent young lady there overlook
ing four looms perhaps, gently releasing a broken
thread, quietly soothing a squeaking pivot, — when
one of these men calls her afterward a person who
works with her hands, and in condescending con-

Work and Labor 437

trast speaks of himself as a person who works with
his brain, I want to knock the man down. Brain,
indeed ! Hand, indeed ! Her work is intellectual
work far more subtle than his. Let them be
judged by their fruits. At the end of a year she
shows so many bales of cloth, or, if you please, so
many men ' clothed in their right mind/ because
she gave her intelligence to clothing men. And
he shows — a ream of paper covered with an
infinite ocean of nothing.

" But I do not stop with our duty to educate the
laborer into a workman. Let us steadily, in all
lines of our duty, remember that there should be
no fixed and permanent class of laborers. Let us
arrange the laws, the customs, and habits, as we
arrange the education, of the community, so that
labor may be regarded as simply a necessary pre
liminary to good work; as we inoculate a child,
though we make him sick for a week, in order that
from one disease he may be exempt forever. To
do this, we must highly disregard much that we
find written in the older books, when the laboring
men made three quarters of a community, while
now they make only one eleventh, as I have shown
you ; and we must determine so to improve indus
try and invention that in twenty years that propor
tion shall be reduced still farther, and there shall
be only five drudges, while there are ninety-five
men and women who have stepped forward in
man's great God-given duty of subduing the
world. Laws, customs, language, education, fash-

438 How They Lived in Hampton

ions, — all must contribute to this advance and
reform.

" My contribution to it to-night, if I have in the
least succeeded, has been made in showing you the
object at which we are aiming. And we are to
remember that mere drudgery — I had almost said,
from its nature — degrades the drudge, and tends
to make him the mere beast which he is called.
In the mere infancy of civilization, the kings of
Europe punished men by making of them galley-
slaves. The severest punishment was to make a
man completely a drudge. All day long, under
the lash perhaps, he was to pull at that heavy oar.
Nay, to disgrace him the more, he was even made
to pull when his toil was wholly wasted, — when
the galley was anchored at the pier. The tread
mill, which I believe we never had in America, but
which I have myself seen in England, was in prac
tice the same thing. It merely took the dead weight
of the man. He walked up on that moving stairway,
— always stepping up and never ascending. Why
have these punishments been abandoned, except in
extreme cases? Why would it be well to abandon
them forever? Simply because they ruined the
man. You treated the man as if he were a beast,
and, by an infinite law he became a beast. The
quality of manhood is to look up, and to look for
ward. You took the quality away when you
repressed it, — when you failed to use it. And
just what happened to those poor galley-slaves and
treadmill men is what is likely to happen to any

Work and Labor 439

man whom I compel to a life of mere brute toil,
unless you enlarge him by that noblest word,
' Friend, go up higher.'

" You may ask any temperance man, who is a
real workman in that great cause, whether drudg
ery is not bad for a man's temperance. Ask the
Blue Ribbon men where danger comes. They will
tell you that it comes when a man's physical frame
is exhausted by his day's toil, and when he has no
ambition to supply a higher stimulus than that of
alcohol. Tired to death, with every muscle ach
ing, with no chance of a to-morrow any higher
than to-day, or that next year will be brighter than
this year, the poor creature goes into the liquor
shop as he leaves his drudgery. For my part, I do
not wonder. I can hardly say I blame him. I
can say I pity him. And you know what follows.
He forgets his fatigue ; he forgets that he is worn
out. There has been one cheerful hour after a
day of wretched toil ; and so, alas ! he comes
again and again, and at last you hear that the devil
who tempted him in has kicked the poor brute out,
because he has nothing to pay to his tempter.
You began by calling him ' poor man,' and then
you said ' poor creature,' and then you said ' poor
brute.' That is, you condemned him to the life of
a brute, and to a brute's life of appetite it reduced
him.

" But, on the other hand, if I wanted to en
courage and improve a gang of laboring men, if I
found the liquor-dealers had got hold of them, and

44° How They Lived in Hampton

were leading them you know where, I would first
of all try to make them see that in the habit of
drink they are selling themselves — yes, and the
children they love better than themselves — to
perpetual slavery. I should show them that in a
country like this, with open lines of promotion, no
man is kept digging in the mud unless he keeps
himself there. I should show them that in that
slavery they are open to the competition of the
heaviest brute and the strongest, who is too dull to
do better, — by which I mean, to him, easier. I
should show them that every starving nation in
Europe, in Asia, or in Africa, sent over ship-loads
of competitors to lower their wages for them. I
should show them that while they were drinking-
men they would never rise a hand's breadth above
this position of drudgery ; and the reason I would
urge to compel them to take the pledge and to
keep it would be that thus they began their up
ward step, with some purpose and some hope. I
should show them what we Christians mean when
we speak of ' The glorious liberty of the sons of
God.'

" I am no preacher, friends, as you know. I do
not pretend to bring you a sermon. But I dare
not stop till I have said that you will find every
word I have said better said in the four Gospels,
and in the letters of that master-workman, as I
have heard Mr. Sherlock call him, — * that master-
workman in the craft of tent-making, Paul of Tar
sus. That men may come into the glorious liberty

Work and Labor 441

of the sons of God, the Saviour of men begs them
to come up higher. That they may do so, Saint
Paul begs them to forget the things that are behind,
and to reach forth to the things that are before.
To do this they need, first of all, for the glorious
renewal of the new birth, to master the body, to
master the mind, by the sway of the Holy Spirit ;
and this means that they will, step by step and day
by day, mount from that drudgery in which brute
force toils with things, up into that higher life in
which the children of God subdue the world."

NOTE. — In reprinting this paper in 1900, I like to say that
Mr. George Morison, our " Pontifex Maximus," tells me that in the
year 1999, the unconscious powers of nature will be so completely
under the control of man, the son of God, — that they will be so
subdivided, — that no man or woman will do any muscular or phys
ical drudgery, unless they want to. It will be possible to sweep
a floor, or to hoe a garden, by the " work " which controls these
unconscious powers.

The New Testament texts in the Received Version and the
Revised Version are : —

" For we are labourers together with God : ye are God's hus
bandry, ye are God's building." — I Cor. iii. 9.

Revised Version. — " For we are God's fellow-workers : ye are
God's husbandry, God's building."

CHAPTER XV

COMMUNISM

THEY had an old Scotchman in the counting-
room at Hampton, named Dugdale. He
said he knew nothing about their business, for
that he was a cotton-bug. But, in truth, he had a
Scotchman's habit of turning his hand to many
things ; he had seen many more countries than
Ulysses ever saw, and many more men ; and, hav
ing kept his eyes open, he had learned something
from every man and every country.

He was so old now that he did not like work at
the loom, and had even given up the superintendence
of one of the weaving-rooms, where he had long
been a master. And now he was the chief book
keeper of the concern.

I was interested to find that he knew personally
Robert Owen, whose experiments at New Lanark,
in social order, attracted so much attention in their
time, and were supposed by so many intelligent
people to carry with them the secret of the indus
tries of the future, — to exhibit, indeed, the " King
dom of Heaven " in the form which it was to take
on earth.

Communism 443

The Emperor Alexander of Russia visited New
Lanark; and Robert Owen went to Elba to per
suade the exiled Napoleon that here was the se
cret of the future.

Dugdale had never worked in his mills. He
was not old enough. But as a baby he had been
attended to in the " Eccaleobion," which Robert
Owen provided for the sustenance of all babies
after they were well hatched. And in later life he
had made a pilgrimage to New Lanark to see the
wrecks of that incipient " City of God," which had
not life enough to live. Very sad it was, he said,
to find astronomical drawings of real value, which
had been prepared for popular lectures, lying
under the foot of man, half-buried by the plaster
which had fallen from the ceiling of the lecture-
room.

Dugdale told me this story one evening, and it
was a very good text for the consideration of dear
old Owen's plans, from which we branched off —
or some of the men present did — into talk of
Fourier and his Phalanstery, of St. Simon, and of
some of the later forms of what is called Socialism,
and of what is called Communism.

Dugdale said — and I think — that the super
ficial writers, particularly the writers for the press,
in their ignorance of the subjects which they pre
tend to consider, had clouded all discussions by
mixing up Communism with a u, as he said, with
Communism with an o. The old word " Commun
ism," with its accent on the first syllable, meant

444 How They Lived in Hampton

one thing. It meant property in common, as the
Shakers of America hold it to-day, or as the
Iroquois Indians of New York held it. What he
called Communism with a uy is the notion of the
violent French radicals, who want to exaggerate
local government, the government of the Com
mune, or, as we should say, of the township. It is
a miserable misfortune for all sensible discussion
that the two words happen to be spelled with the
same letters. For they mean two wholly different
things. Yet you can hardly find a recent pamphlet
on the subject which is not obscured by a careless
ness about two things which have hardly any
thing to do with each other.

Dugdale had himself, in earlier life, tried some
of the socialistic and communistic experiments.
He had even spent part of one winter with the
Shakers. He had read some of the best-digested
French plans. I found he knew about the Fami-
listere at Guise. And, indeed, he went into the
philosophy of the system of the Iroquois as I had
never heard any American do, even if he were a
citizen of the State of New York.

In point of fact, he said, — and I have satisfied
myself that the remark is true, — property in com
mon, if one may use words so contradictory, was
the beginning of property in more savage times,
out of which we have gradually emerged, and we
are to look back into semi-barbarism for an illus
tration of it, instead of looking forward into a
higher civilization. If Mr. Henry George really

Communism 445

wants to see what happens, when all land is owned
by the State, let him go to the Cherokee Reservation,
in the Indian Territory, where land is held so now.
He can see how he likes that. It is by gradually
working upward and outward from this common
holding of which every country in the world has
illustrations in its earlier history, that we have
come out on the system of to-day. In to-day's
system a great deal of wealth is still held in com
mon. It is " Res Publica," the Common Wealth.
But for certain things, men and women have pre
ferred to have their own " proper "-ty.

Dugdale said that when Robert Owen was eighty
years old, as eager as ever in his hopes for the
" Family Unions," as he called his villages, he him
self asked the old man what people would do when
the world was all mathematically adjusted. Dug-
dale expressed the fear that it would be a very
stupid world.

" Do ! " cried the old reformer, with a blaze of
light as from heaven on his face. "Do? Why,
they will travel ! Think of the joy of travelling,
without expense, without fatigue, and without
baggage"

And he explained that the traveller would tele
graph in advance that he was coming, and would
find clean clothing laid out for him in his bed
room, fitted to his size, — five feet seven, or six
feet three, as the case might be.

Dugdale had intimated, in reply, that most men
had a fancy for wearing their own shirts.

446 How They Lived in Hampton

Really, in this anecdote, the whole principle was
involved. On the whole, men preferred to own
their own shirts, their own axes, penknives, pens,
paper, and so their own houses, oxen, horses and
barns. John likes to drive a fiery trotter, who will
go on the road at 2.40. William had rather drive
a quiet family beast, who will not annoy him as
they go on the road, but will bring him out safely
six miles at the end of an hour. Because, on the
whole, mankind prefers private property in certain
things, men have private property in certain things.

But there is other property, which is Common
Wealth, and the government of the Common
Wealth holds it and administers it. Undoubtedly
it is a subject for discussion and experiment how
much of such property there shall be. Indeed, it
may be wise for one community to hold certain
wealth in common, while another community finds
it best to hold it in severalty. The weakness of
Mr. Spencer's discussion of this subject, as of many
other discussions from different English radicals,
comes on their insisting on classing all property
together, and protesting against any claims of
Government. This comes from the dread which
their fathers were bred in, by the maladminis
tration of a landed aristocracy.

But, on the whole, it has proved advisable that
the nation shall own the lighthouses. Next to
these, it has proved advisable that it shall own the
high-roads, that they shall not be owned by private
companies. In America we are satisfied that the

Communism 447

State should own the schoolhouses. Whether it
shall own the higher schools, — the colleges and
universities, — has not been decided in an experi
ence. Some States, as Michigan and Wisconsin,
own the buildings and funds of their universities,
and administer them. In some States, as in Mas
sachusetts and Connecticut, they are the property
of distinct corporations. Most American cities
think it best to own their own water-works. The
reservoirs, the pipes, and all the apparatus, are
part of the wealth in common belonging to the
Commonwealth. There seems to be no principle
which should prevent the city government from
owning the gas-works and gas-pipes, in the same
way. But, on the whole, the present habit is to
leave this property to special corporations.

In the same way, it would be hard to define any
principle which should prevent a State from own
ing a railway, — as, indeed, many of the European
states do, — as most states own the ordinary road
way, on which foot-men, horses, cattle, and ordinary
carriages travel. Whoever will take the pains, in
his own neighborhood, to calculate how much
money has been spent by the public upon roads,
courthouses, schoolhouses, and other public build
ings, water-works, street-lamps, and other similar
conveniences, will find very soon, that nearly or
quite half the property in that neighborhood is
now the Common Wealth. There has been no
prejudice against that sort of wealth, where it is
the most convenient form of property. But there

448 How They Lived in Hampton

is other property which, on the whole, in the
experience of mankind, it has proved best to
reserve for separate or individual holding. This
is what we commonly call personal property.
Between the two is real estate, which is held by
the individual as personal property but, at the
same time, is held under the eminent domain of
society, which takes it when it chooses for a
railway, a canal, a reservoir, a schoolhouse, a
public library, or any other purpose where, on the
whole, its use is needed for or by the Common
wealth.

Of course it is true that, as civilization goes
forward, new experiments may be tried, and new
adjustments may be found necessary. If a town
ship happened to hold a great water-power, it
might find it desirable to establish an electric
plant, for light, as a part of the wealth in common.
Having established it for the highways, it would
be absurd not to permit its use in separate homes,
if there were light enough to be used so.

In just the same way most of our States have
found it convenient to institute State asylums for
insanity, for the blind, the deaf, and the dumb.
Large cities find it convenient to establish hospi
tals for the sick, as a part of their wealth in com
mon. There is no principle which prevents a small
village from doing the same thing. But in a small
village the necessity does not press in the same
way, and certain inconveniences prevent such an
arrangement. In either case, however, the insti-

Communism 449

tution is founded — or it is not founded — as the
particular exigency may demand.

Now the difficulty in all the grand paper theories,
for arranging the common wealth, has been that
infallibly there has been a vein of patronage or
condescension visible all along in the arrangements
of the projector. Robert Owen really thought
that he knew how to take care of little babies
better than their mothers did. So he took the
babies into a common nursery, while the mothers
worked at spinning-jennies or looms. He went so
far as to indicate in advance the cut of the dress
which children were to wear at play. St. Simon,
Fourier, and the whole tribe take just the same
strain. They talk of " laborers," or the " prole
tariat," or the " working class," just as you
might talk of the mackerel you meant to catch, or
of the pounds of steam which were to drive your
piston. What follows? Why, as soon as Dale
Owen carries a colony to New Harmony, it goes
to pieces on a rebellion about this matter of dress.
Garfield said " that all the people are much wiser
than any one of the people." The people know
what they want much better than any student of
their wants knows. They know where the shoe
pinches, and what hinge needs oil.

And the danger and the failure of what are called
socialistic schemes, — or communistic schemes,
social unions, phalansteries, or whatever they are
called, — spring from their being imposed from
above below, in this infatuation of superiority. It

29

45° How They Lived in Hampton

all belongs to the middle ages,^and to feudalism,
where a baron at once protected and directed his
inferiors.

But begin at the other end, — begin on the
Christian principle, where he who is greatest
among you is your servant, and is only great
because he serves, — and you will not have any
danger, and your failure will be easily remedied.
Let the people associate where they want to and
need, and they will work out their own successes.
From their experiments have come such triumphs
as mutual insurance, as the limited liability laws, as
co-operative trade, co-operative banking, co-oper
ative fishing, co-operative housekeeping. If they
make a mistake, why, they will stop soon enough.
They have no passion for burning their fingers.
And where they succeed, they will push forward in
the same line, and they will find plenty of imitators.

It ought not to be necessary to say this at any
length. Briefly, such success is the Christian suc
cess, freely promised to those who seek first the
Kingdom of God, and mean to live righteously.
He who is greatest among them is their servant.
And, in the common service, the common cause
succeeds.

CHAPTER XVI

CONCLUSION

IT would not have been difficult to throw this
account of Hampton into a more systematic
form than has been attempted. But it is desirable
that such accounts should be read, as well as that
they should be written. And I have supposed
that by describing the different features of the
enterprise, with some reference to the different
points of view of the persons most engaged in
them, it would be easier to enlist readers.

It is not, however, perhaps, going too much into
the philosophy of social order, if, in this closing
chapter, the writer tries to state a few of the
principles on which the success of such an enter
prise as that at Hampton is based. First of all, it
is to be remembered that America is, and always
was, and always will be, a democratic country, — a
country of the people, governed by the people, for
the people, in the people's way. It really made no
difference whether the allegiance of this country
were given to an English king or to an American
constitution. It had been a democratic country
from the very beginning, and it would not be diffi-

452 How They Lived in Hampton

cult to show that it could not have been anything
else. By this is meant, that the People, having
of necessity to take a good deal of the care and
arrangement of their own lives, took that care so
as a matter of course that it was always impossible
to push or pull them by any wires, as if they were
puppets, to be directed by a superior class. The
People had made their own roads, had laid out
their own towns, had established their own courts,
had created their own local governments; and a
People which had done this was entirely outside of
any possible aristocratic or despotic governments.
This is simply the explanation of the constitutions
of the American towns and cities.

A man has only to see how the roads are
mended in a country community in America to
understand what is meant by the popular direction
in public affairs. It is no engineer, sent down
from a central capital, who brings with him experts,
trained to road-building, and what the French
would call " proletaries " to execute their orders.
It is, on the other hand, the people of the farms
who are themselves to ride over the roads, who
come, at a day almost self-appointed, with their
oxen, their shovels, their picks, and their hoes, and
execute together certain work which the experience
of the neighborhood shows necessary. There is
probably some person in nominal authority, who is
called a " supervisor of the roads," but this man
acts, and knows he acts, under the appointment of
the very people whose work he is supposed to di-

Conclusion 453

rect, and the correction of any faults of the roads
might fairly be said to be due to a popular rising
in the neighborhood for that purpose.

Upon people so trained and habituated to using
their own personal judgment in the management of
their own affairs, there was super-imposed, by the
changes of life and business, what we call the fac
tory system. There has never been any trouble in
the factory system in America, when the conditions
were such that the instincts of the national popular
life could be maintained. That is to say, if the
people themselves who were to do the work, felt
that they had some discretion in the matter, and
could bring some of their own intelligence to bear
on the matter, they have never had any difficulty
in carrying forward the manufacturing process on
a large scale, with great precision and with impor
tant results. But, on the other hand, any person
who is accustomed to the direction of " laborers,"
laboring men, or " operatives," in the countries of
Europe, finds, from the very beginning, that this
direction from above working below, autocratic in
its character, and savoring rather of Celtic than of
Teutonic life, is met with obstacles at every step.

Whenever we hear of a difficulty in a mill, or
a misunderstanding between employers and em
ployed, it may be said, almost with certainty, that
the parties on the one side or the other have devi
ated perhaps of necessity, from the original idea,
which is, at bottom, the idea of mutual help or
co-operation.

454 How They Lived in Hampton

It has been intimated in these pages more than
once that wherever the American idea is permitted
to assert itself the results are simple and satisfac
tory, as in the well-known instance of the Nantucket
whale-fishery, and the fisheries for mackerel and
cod carried on from both the large capes of Massa
chusetts Bay. It would even be fair to take the
great military achievements of the volunteer armies
of the United States as an illustration of what is
gained when the national principle is permitted to
assert itself. If, after one of the great conscriptions
of Europe, it were proposed that the recruits should
hold an election to choose their captains and lieu
tenants, it may almost be said that every command
ing officer now on the continent of Europe would
commit hari-kari, or seek a happy release in the
face of a proposal which he would consider as, in
itself, so fatal to all energy and authority. But
when the United States had occasion to call, not
for recruits, but for volunteers, and to bring those
volunteers into the field, the States which were in
the habit of intrusting to their soldiers the election
of their own lieutenants and captains found no
occasion to change their habit; and the discipline
of that army was maintained with precisely the
same precision that belongs to what we call the
regular army of the United States, in which no
such privilege was ever sought for or expected.
That is to say, the people of the United States
understand perfectly well that there must be order,
there must be command, there must be authority.

Conclusion 455

But, on the other hand, the people of the United
States, from the very nature of their being, from the
circumstances which called them into existence,
understand that they are the real fountain of
authority, order, and command, and they like to
be consulted before authority is asserted.

All this, it may be said, is merely theoretical.
Possibly it is so ; but the theory involved is based
upon national habits which it is impossible to pass
by without consideration. Now, the problem be
fore men who would organize industry on a large
scale, for any specific purpose, involves, first of all,
the question how the organization to be made shall
move easily and without friction. How shall you
enlist the good-will of those who must work to
gether in this system? This is really the first
question. The first question is not how shall you
secure the largest market, or how shall you make
the most money. If the institution is to be a per
manent institution, the question is, How are you to
secure the good-will of all hands engaged ?

It may be granted that the visible result does not
very much differ, though it has been produced in
half a dozen different ways. A company, for
instance, whose troops or whose officers have been
commissioned by a higher authority, would not
differ in the aspect of a parade from a company of
volunteer troops whose officers have been, nomi
nally at least, chosen by the privates. But if, in
one of these two cases, there were harmony and
good feeling and alacrity among the men, and in

456 How They Lived in Hampton

the other case you found nothing better, perhaps,
than indifference, or at least willingness to obey,
there would be a difference in the quality of the
thing done, which would give the preference to
one system or the other.

It is certainly true that in industries not requir
ing the co-operation of very large numbers of
persons, it is easy to obtain that sympathy and
good-will of all hands which is desired, without
any very formal effort for the purpose. Most
agricultural industries can be carried on with that
good-natured fellow-feeling which has been de
scribed as belonging to the race, — the willingness,
on the one hand, to lend a hand, with the expecta
tion, on the other hand, of respect and confidence.
The book in the reader's hand is an effort to show
that the same sympathy, mutual regard, and mutual
help may be obtained in the largest processes of
manufacturing, as it is attained on board of a fish
ing-smack or a whaling-ship, or in the work of a
large farm.

The principle of co-operation is so essential to
all Christian civilization, and has asserted itself
with such signal success in many of the walks of
industry, that the word is now used, particularly
by careless people, as if it were a talisman. The
novelist, who has used all the pages of this book
for the purpose of showing how terrible is the
conflict between the employers and the employed,
waves his wand at the end with the word " co
operation," and all bad dragons are expected to

Conclusion 457

sink into the abyss, and good angels to appear
in their places. But it is perfectly well known that
the experiments of co-operative industry on a large
scale have not succeeded so far as to induce their
repetition on a larger scale. Until this measure of
success has been attained, it is necessary to study
the experiments which have been made, to see in
what is the point of failure.

As the reader knows, the writer believes that
the failure is due to the neglect of skilful Man
agement. In most co-operative enterprises it is
taken for granted that if you have a great body of
privates any fool can command them. Such is apt
to be the feeling of insurgents when they rise to a
great but new duty. No fallacy is more danger
ous, and no statement is more false. The success
of a business enterprise depends entirely upon the
skill with which it is Managed, and upon the faith
fulness and constancy and courage of its managers.
Unless the necessity for such gifts is recognized at
the very outset, unless they are rated where they
belong, as among the rare gifts of men, without
which success is impossible, the enterprise fails.
It fails just as certainly as it would fail if it had no
capital, or as it would fail if the work-people all
deserted it. To hold in proper respect those who
mediate between the capitalist and the workmen,
to give to them authority, absolute in its place and
sufficient for every purpose, — this is the first
necessity in such enterprises. But it is a necessity
which has constantly been neglected — one might

45 8 How They Lived in Hampton

say, has been almost always neglected — in the
plans for co-operative industry. There is a general
impression that the managers must be kept under :
must be kept in a subordinate position. It is
thought that they have gained too much in the
past, and that, for the future, they must be paying
back the debt which has been contracted by their
class. And so the enterprise, involving vigorous
and loyal effort on the part of the workingmen,
fails, as the army would fail which was not led by
a skilful and experienced general.

The distinctive feature, then, in the Hampton
enterprise, as an enterprise of co-operation, is that
the Management is recognized as one of the three
important factors in the business. We consider it
important that the elements of success should be
thus classified. The general effort in the past has
been to give to Capital the place of Management,
and to place the workman in subordination to the
union thus formed. The dreams of the future
most prevalent have generally given to the work
men the Management, and made Capital subordi
nate to the union thus formed. The argument of
this book is directed to show that Capital has its
place, that Management has its place, and that
Work has its place. We believe it will be con
venient to divide about equally the profits of
any enterprise between those who represent these
three necessary departments of every enterprise.
We believe that it is as dangerous to combine the
one of these departments with the other as it is in

Conclusion 459

civil government to combine the legislative function
with the judicial function, or the judicial function
with that of the executive. We believe that the
general good attained will be in proportion as the
three functions are kept visibly distinct before all
men's eyes.

It may very well happen that the workingman
who is succeeding in life does not choose to con
tinue the investment of his property in the savings-
bank, but buys into the stock of the company
which employs him. So true is it that " corporation
is co-operation." But no such disposition of a
man's property is necessary in the Hampton
system, as it has been described in these pages ;
and it has been more convenient, for tracing the
principle involved, to keep the representatives of
Capital, Management, and Industry separate from
each other. The author has given to this book as
a second title, " Christianity applied to Manu
facture." By this he means to intimate that the
plans of the future for large manufacturing will be
akin to the American plan for government. They
will involve, as an essential element, the ability of
the people to direct their own amusements, their
own education, their own charities, — in a word,
their own social life. As a part of this direction,
they will have their own personal interest, as they
now do, indeed, in the success of the industries
which employ them from day to day. It was very
natural that a few men of property in large towns
should conceive the idea of insuring the ships, the

460 How They Lived in Hampton

houses, or the lives of their persons. But, in the
regular growth of an American system, this over
sight of insurance passes from the hands of the few
into the hands of the many, and, in the long run,
under the system of mutual insurance, the same
person is the insurer and the insured. It is by a
movement precisely parallel, as the author con
ceives, that the manufacturing of America has
developed on democratic lines. Exactly as insur
ance began when a few rich men met in a counting-
house and planned an insurance company, the
large manufactures began when a few rich men met
and planned a cotton factory or a woollen mill.
But, by a growth exactly analogous to the growth
of mutual insurance, it will probably prove that the
persons who have in hand the raw materials and
work them up will be counted in, not simply as
passive, but among the interested allies in the
manufacture to which they lend themselves. There
will result a sympathy and common force which is
gained when a body of people say, " We are going
to do this," or "We are going to do that," and
which cannot exist when they say, " He proposes
this," or " He proposes that." It will be for the
next generation to indicate the steps by which this
enlargement of human power will be attained. Of
those steps the watchword is " Together."

One has not far to go in the history of America
to find the illustrations of the principle involved in
every stage of our social history. It would be fair
to say that, from Maine to Florida, from the Atlan-

Conclusion 461

tic to the Pacific, there is not a community, large
or small, which has been established, in its present
condition, at the fiat of a superior power. The
principle of successful republican administration
has been, on the other hand, the movement of the
people, and the participation of the people. Louis
XIV. could give the orders for the foundation of
the city of Orleans. But, though it held the com
mand of the commerce of the Mississippi River,
the little port, created to order, was an insignificant
hamlet, until, in a new dynasty, the People who
wanted to use the advantages of that position
swept in upon it, and gave to it a new birth. The
Middle States can show hundreds of the ruins of
fanciful colonies, established from above, by this
or that schemer who meant — as Robert Owen did,
as St. Simon did — to bring in a new kingdom.
But such endeavors have regularly failed. The
unsuccessful colonies established before the time
of Jamestown were similar failures. The colony
of Virginia almost failed, for a like reason, and it
was not until a popular element was introduced in
her affairs that a favorable era of prosperity set in.
Exactly the same is true of the early history of the
Carolinas.

On the other hand, the States in which emigra
tion is as free as air, irresistibly, from the law of
man's nature, one might say, prospered. A dozen
men, with their families, be it observed, found
themselves neighbors of each other on the same
township or grant, or, if they preceded any survey,

462 How They Lived in Hampton

in the same valley. Infallibly they consulted to
gether about building the necessary roads and
bridges. Roads and bridges may be said to be
the first necessity of organized society. For de
fence against savages, perhaps for carrying the
mail, and, before long, for common worship, for
common education, these men must meet together.
Every one is interested. Every one expresses his
interest. Every one offers his plan. If a plan is
tried and fails, the experiment has been on so
small a scale that no one suffers greatly. If it is
tried and succeeds, every little community in the
neighborhood tries the experiment again, and it
works its way over the land.

It is in this freedom by which every man acts,
and is expected to act in social affairs, that the
mystery and majesty of self-government consist.
The writers of Europe generally misapprehend
self-government, and the European advisers of
America misapprehend it. Self-government does
not consist in the election, by any " plebiscite " or
other public act, of the magistrate or emperor who
is to govern the people. Self-government does not
appear till the people govern themselves. In
homes, in churches, in the meetings of school dis
tricts or of townships, in the affairs of insurance
companies or railways, in lodges, chapters, com-
manderies, and posts of charitable societies, the
people which is used to self-government carries
out its methods of self-government. Among the
methods, one is the choice of a chief magistrate,

Conclusion 463

to attend to certain national affairs, to which kings
attend in other nations. But this man is not the
ruler of the nation which chooses him; on the
other hand, he is ruled by the nation.

Any enterprise which is to succeed in America
recognizes as a very important element for success
this aptness of the people for self-government and
the manifold triumphs which have sprung from it.
The successful projector leaves every agent, as far
as possible, to work with his own tools, in his own
way, to bring his own contribution to the common
weal, and is glad to accept the intelligent sugges
tion and co-operation of all concerned. He is glad
to have public opinion and the public sentiment
on his side. He does not resent advice from one
of his hands. He is glad if any one of them speaks
of " our success, our plans, our improvement."

One of the most intelligent English essayists on
the modern inventions in mechanical art says dis
tinctly that to this ready co-operation of the work
men in the American shops is due, in large
measure, the success of American novelties in
machinery. He says that a new model introduced
in an American shop challenges the interest of
everybody. Everybody is ready to make a sug
gestion. Everybody wants it to succeed. The
men set to work upon it cherish it as if it were
their own. It has the best chance from the begin
ning. The contrast which he draws, from the cool
and indifferent reception of a new invention in an

464 How They Lived in Hampton

English shop, need not be quoted here. It is not
flattering. At bottom the common feeling of
mutual help, trained by all true American institu
tions, is the origin of the cordial welcome thus
given to the new invention.

Men like to work together. They have a com
mon share, of course, in the common weal, and
they are glad to have it recognized.

Now in the village of Hampton this common
force of the " together " was recognized, not simply
in political government, but, as the reader has seen,
in all their affairs. It was not necessary to import
such an arrangement, or to ask any legislator to
devise it for them. The people drifted into the

plan

" From native impulse, elemental force."

Thus, a detail as much parted from their politi
cal system as was the management of their amuse
ments took care of itself, as one is tempted to say,
because it was every man's affair. It is not quite
just to say that no one takes care of that which
every one should care for. It may be that self
ish men hold back; it often is so. But let it be
proudly recognized that the responsibility of any
enterprise is with the community and not with the
individual, and, as in the case of Dick Sheridan's
district meeting, which has been described, the
community can be made to understand its responsi
bility. When it is made to understand it and to
accept it, it will go forward much more steadily
than when it is instructed from above or com-

Conclusion 465

manded from above. So it proved in the matter
of amusements. This community provided for
them lavishly, while it provided for them intelli
gently. It did so because the leaders of opinion
trusted the people with a matter which specially
concerned the people. The people, in consequence,
secured amusements which amused, and entertain
ments which entertained. At the same time, these
were amusements and entertainments which did
not degrade or contaminate their children.

The same thing is to be said of the public library.
One finds, not infrequently, a large foundation for
a public library, in which the annual income is
carefully, even wisely, expended, but where the
real people of the place, for whom such costly
provision is made, do not avail themselves of the
books which are at their hands. You shall find
that in one town a free library is diligently and
largely used, and, in another town, that a better
library is hardly used at all. You may go into a
large and elegant reading-room of a winter evening,
to find perhaps one boy, for whom all this lavish
preparation has been made. The other boys and
the girls, the men and the women, have not ac
cepted the " silent friends " who are waiting for
them. The books stand not read upon the
shelves.

The people of Hampton secured themselves
from such mortification, because they themselves
conducted, as they had organized, their library.
They knew what they wanted, and they bought it.

30

466 How They Lived in Hampton

It was well for them, perhaps, that they had not
too large a fund for the purchase of books. They
counted the dollars which they spent, and they
spent them well. But nothing was more clear than
that the library did not suffer because it depended
upon the public generosity. There was nothing,
I was told, for which money was voted so gener
ously in the annual meeting. " After they once
tasted blood," Mr. Spinner said to me, " they were
always ready to vote the appropriations."

The readjustment of the savings bank, which
has been described, was simply the application
of the same habit. It came from the magic of
" together." If there is mutual insurance, why
not mutual banking? If a poor man can place
money on deposit, why may he not draw it, if he
have good indorsers? There is no greater mis
take than that which supposes that, because a
man has but little, he will be careless about
investment. He is more careful than the man
of millions. And the necessity of keeping well
what they had earned hardly, made the Hampton
weavers very cautious before they granted their
indorsements.

It has been intimated already, more than once,
that the success of their movement, in one detail
or another, sprang from their willingness to sub
mit to Christian requisitions, while they claimed and
expected the advantages promised to the living
children of the living God. They were willing to

Conclusion 467

do their share in working out their own salvation,
and they knew that while they worked, God worked
with them. They were not expecting the coming
of any kingdom for which they had not made some
sacrifice themselves. And it was because they
trusted the God to whom they prayed, that they
believed that the Christian law of love would be
sufficient for their enterprise.

These sketches of the prosperity which fol
lows on an attempt to carry out Christian law
in Christian love are dedicated to any man and
woman who seek in the gospel the direction for
daily life. It is not pretended that such plans will
recommend themselves to individuals who want to
live alone, every man for himself, or who seek
only the separate indulgences of such lonely life.
For such men it may be freely granted that the
cold-blooded maxims of the economists are the
only maxims. But the success of these maxims
in tKe social history of the world has not been so
decided that they should tempt any one to accept
them as a rule of life.

Such plans for the good of all, as those attempted
at Hampton, could not have been carried out in
any heathen civilization. They would have failed in
ancient Rome ; they would have failed in Athens ;
they would have failed in ancient Jerusalem. They
belong only in the social system founded by the
Saviour of mankind, among men and women who
hope to live in his Spirit and by his Law.

Perhaps this has been said often enough, as the

468 How They Lived in Hampton

different chapters have described different details.
The men and women who embark on such plans
must understand in their personal religious ex
perience, that " if one member suffer, all the mem
bers suffer with it," and that if one member is to
rejoice, all the members will rejoice with it. They
will remember that the Saviour, in his promises
for the coming of the Kingdom of God, does not
address such promises to any one lonely follower.
He takes it for granted, rather, that such lonely
follower breathes the common life of the church,
and that its life-blood flows in his veins. It is to
the " little flock " that he promises the Kingdom.
And to the flock, " if ye seek the Kingdom of
God," he promises the temporal success which
belongs with the Kingdom, and is the reward of
such endeavor. It is nowhere promised to the
Buddhist, satisfied with self-inspection ; it is no
where promised to the hermit, parting himself
from men. It is promised to those who are sons
and daughters of God, united in one Spirit, who
pray with one prayer to the Father.

By a movement perfectly steady and assured,
the Christian church has moved forward on the
lines thus indicated.

It abolished human slavery, — first in the Roman
Empire, and eventually in the Christian world.

It raised the condition of woman, — first to the
condition she had enjoyed in the Holy Land, eventu
ally to a grade where she is the recognized equal
of man.

Conclusion 469

The feudal system, under Christian lead, took
the place of the social tyranny of Rome, and,
in its turn, gave way to the social order which
gives every man and woman equal rights before
the law.

As it advances, the Christian Spirit provides for
the humblest and weakest child of God the same
privileges for health, for education, for develop
ment, as are provided for the richest.

In government, as the Spirit of Christ and his
Law take more possession of men, the People
rules itself, — it is no longer under the direction
of any man or any class. The Saviour's word is
fulfilled, and " he who is greatest among you is
your servant." The word " democracy " means
simply the application of Christianity in politics.

It is for the next century and the closing years
of this to show how these eternal principles of a
divine life are to inspire the great commercial
movements of modern time. In manufacture, in
all the applications of science for the comfort of
mankind, and in that trade in which nation ex
changes products against nation and man against
man, the divine law is to reign. Such social
arrangements also are to come into God's King
dom. Men will not be content to live every man
for himself, nor to die every man for himself. In
work, in art, in study, in trade, — in all life, indeed,
— the children of God, called by a Saviour's voice,
will wish to live in the common cause. They will
live for the common wealth, — this is the modern

47° How They Lived in Hampton

phrase. They will bear each other's burdens, —
this is the phrase of Paul. They will live in the
life of Love. And it will prove true, as it was
promised, that all things are added to the com
munity which thus seeks the Kingdom of God and
his Righteousness.

THE END

THE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SANTA CRUZ

This book is due on the last DATE stamped below.

MAY 3 177

FEB 2 1 1978 fiEC'D

50m-l,'69(J5643s8)2373— 3A.1

£>

53X

3TORED AT NRL

PS1772.S9 1900

3 2106 00206 9489